Work Text:
It was the slam of the door that roused him.
He opened his eyes, and the world slowly came back into focus, softened by the lamplight. Confusingly, his view was of a series of black and white squares, as though he’d fallen asleep on a giant chessboard, and it took him a while to realise that he was lying on the chequerboard tiles of the hall floor. From this strange angle, he could see that the skirting board needed dusting; his mother would have had a fit about such lax standards of housekeeping.
Still. It was… odd.
Slow, lumbering footsteps thudded on the path outside, followed by the familiar creak of the wooden gate and then, seconds later, the roar of an engine. James would have known that sound anywhere—Sirius’s bike. But why would Sirius leave him lying on the floor like this? Had they argued? Fought? It seemed unlikely, and yet what other explanation was there?
Frowning, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, straightening his glasses. He should ask Lily, he decided. She was bound to know what—.
And that was when he remembered.
Lily! Harry!
James’s eyes widened in shock as the events of the evening suddenly flooded back. He was here! They were in danger! Harry was in danger!
Then came the memory of the light, sickly and green and icy cold as it struck his chest. James knew that light. He’d seen it so many times on order missions, danced away from it by the skin of his teeth, watched others fall in its path countless times. How was it possible that he’d survived? No one survived the killing curse.
He scrambled to his feet and looked down.
And stopped dead.
Literally.
There, on the floor, lying still at his feet, he saw himself; his own lifeless body. His eyes were open, unseeing. His hand, empty of his wand, outstretched towards the door. Slowly, he raised that same hand in front of his face and examined it. It had the same long fingers, calloused from broomstick handles and guitar strings. It had the same collection of veins and tendons and blemishes. It looked the same as it always had except… except it was somehow insubstantial. Somehow strange.
He swallowed hard, stomach churning with nausea—except, it wasn’t, was it? Because there was no stomach, there could be no nausea, only the memory of how he might have felt, once upon a time. His chest heaved, rising and falling with breaths not taken, merely moving on instinct and achieving nothing. And all the while, he stared at that hand, its identical twin splayed across the floor, willing it not to be true, desperately searching for an escape route that could never come.
“James?”
Lily’s voice! Joy surged through him as his head whipped towards the sound, because maybe, perhaps, all was not lost after all.
She was standing on the bottom step, and it took only a split second, the cruelest of moments, to realise that her fate was no different to his own. It was there in her ethereal other-ness, at the same time more her and also less. It was there in the way that her gaze flickered between the him lying on the cold tiled floor, and the him standing there, staring back at her. It was there in her eyes, pleading and devastated.
“No. Please no. Not you too.” he whispered. “And… Harry, Lil? Is he…”
“He’s safe.” Her voice was cracked and broken. “I don’t know how I know, but I do. I tried James. I tried to get away but…”
“It’s okay, love,” he told her, when she trailed off. “You kept him safe. That’s all that matters.”
“What do we do now?” she asked him.
“I don’t know.” He shoved his hand through his hair, surprised to find that he could feel it, soft and familiar against his fingers. Or at least, he thought he could; maybe he only remembered it.
With a sharp click, the front door began to swing open. The sudden noise made them both jump, and James instinctively hurried to the bottom of the stairs to put himself between Lily and whatever was outside, before realising how monumentally pointless the act was. Lily placed her hand on his shoulder, letting him know that she appreciated it all the same, and he could have sworn that her touch felt real; material and reassuring.
“What on earth?” she wondered, softly and breathlessly and James could only agree, because instead of the garden path outside the cottage, the front door instead opened on… nothing. Just pure, brilliant, whiteness. “Are we supposed to go through?”
“I think so.” He tilted his chin to look at her over his shoulder. “But we can’t just leave Harry! He’ll need us!”
She slipped past him down the final step to stand next to him. “There’s nothing more we can do for him here. But maybe there we can… keep watch?”
Even as she said it, he knew she was right. She usually was; his beautiful, brilliant wife. He held out his hand. “Okay. Together?”
“Together.”
She placed her palm in his, and it was real, he knew it—the warmth, and the comfort, just the same as always. How could it be any other way with them?
He looked down at her to see her gazing back, green eyes bright and determined. Merlin, but he loved her, he thought, finding strength in her, now as always, as they stepped towards the open door.
Then, hand in hand and without looking back, they walked together into the light.
Now, at the end of all things, they went.... On.