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Don’t Worry Baby


James was sitting in the room with Charlus - Dora had fallen asleep crying against her husband’s shoulder and Charlus himself lay awake, but unable to talk, stroking her shoulder. James was flipping through his book, trying to distract himself. He felt anxious. Just so anxious. Every muscle in his body begged him to move, to go, to do something, but there wasn’t a thing he could do, no where he could go. He stared at the book, but the pages were blurring together and he couldn’t focus on the words.

There was a clearing of a throat and James looked up to the doorway and there was Lily Evans.

She stood mousishly in the doorway, timid, her hands folded in front of her.

James dogeared the page in the book and put it down on the seat as he slid out of it. He glanced at Charlus, “I’ll be right back, Dad,” he murmured, and he slid out of the seat.

Lily was holding something grey. James reached her side and she held it up. “I found this in the car. I think you left it there the night we flew after Sirius…”

It was his Gryffindor jumper. His favorite jumper. Charlus’s.

James’s throat tightened up. He took it up in his arms and hugged it to his chest. He’d never been so bloody happy to see a jumper in all his life. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

Lily nodded.

He had his eyes cast downward.

With as melancholy as he was now, it was hard to believe this was the same boy who had made jokes about winning omelette competitions just that morning, who had come to the door bursting with excited nerves and giving her flowers -- oh her flowers, she’d wanted to keep them and press them in a book, but they were gone now like everything else from that room, that house… -- and she felt guilty all over again. She reached forward and brushed James’s hair off his forehead.

His eyes swiveled up to hers.

“I was mean to Sirius,” he said quietly.

“Sirius will be okay,” Lily answered.

James walked over and sank into the chairs along the wall and Lily sat next to him. He held the balled up Gryffindor sweater to his face and bent forward, his elbows on his knees.

Tentatively, Lily reached out a hand and she ran it across James’s spine, trying to make him feel better. She could feel the tension there, all knotted up, and she whispered, “You poor thing…”

A silent tear slid over his cheek.

“You’re just so busy being strong for everyone, aren’t you?” Lily whispered, “And who’s being strong for you?”

James closed his eyes. “Nobody,” he barely breathed the word, it was really like he mouthed it as silently as that tear had been.

“James, come here, dear.” She paused. “Stag, I mean stag.”

He choked a laugh and a sob at the same time and turned to see she’d opened her arms up for him and he turned, leaning into her, his cheek pressing against her shoulder, his forehead and nose against the curve of her neck as she brought her hands up to guard his face as she felt the warmth of tears against her skin. She held him, and he made her his hiding place, the tears finally coming, and she felt the tension in his shoulders break, as he cried.

And because she wasn’t sure what else to do, she did what her mum used to do when she cried when she was little, she hummed quietly as she ran her fingers through his hair. He recognized the song from Sirius’s muggle tapes, although she sang it much slower than the Beach Boys did, and he couldn’t help but think how much he preferred her version of it...

“Well it’s been building up inside of me
For - oh, I don’t know how long…
I don’t know why but I keep thinking
Something’s bound to go wrong
But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says --
Don’t worry baby
Don’t worry baby…
Don’t worry baby, everything will turn out alright
Don’t worry baby… Don’t worry baby… Don’t worry baby - oooh, ooh, oh…”

Her voice was so soft and soothing and he could feel the song rumbling in her chest and his tears slowed as she sang and she felt him slowly grow heavier as the muscles in his back released and… and he fell asleep against her in her arms. She stroked his cheek and just held him.

It was several minutes before Dora came out of the room, pulling a blanket she was wearing like a shawl around herself, looking up and down the hallway. “James?” a worried expression was on her face…

“Shh.” Lily whispered, “Mrs. Potter.”

Dora looked down and saw the pair of them - saw her James asleep there in Lily’s arms, so much more peaceful than she’d seen him recently - and her expression softened and she whispered, “Oh I’m sorry. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.” She hesitated. “Do you need me to --” and she motioned for her and Lily to switch places.

Lily shook her head, “We’re okay.”

Dora looked like she was a cross between jealous and relieved and pleased… a funny flickering of emotions of an overprotective, loving mother. She nodded, then, and said, “If you need us… just around the corner here…” she pointed to the room door, hesitated, then went back in the room. And Lily rested her cheek against James’s head and continued singing quietly to James, even though he was asleep…

“Don’t worry baby… everything will be alright…”

By the time Sirius came up the stairs after cleaning out the Lupin house, Lily had fallen asleep, too, her cheek pressed against James’s head, her nose nestled in his hair.

Sirius stood before them, staring down at the pair of them in a little knot on the chairs. He watched them a couple moments, feeling relieved, and a funny feeling as though his entire world made more sense now that he’d seen them like this. It was the human equivalent of his tail wagging, he thought, this feeling he had. And he smiled at them without disturbing them.

When Sirius ducked into the hospital room, it was to find Dora and Charlus in a similar position. Dora asleep in the crook of Charlus’s arms, having climbed up onto the bed beside him, her palm splayed over his chest and his scaled cheek against her forehead…

Sirius returned to the waiting room back on the first floor and found Remus and Ned Veigler had started a game of chess on the table, Remus sitting on the floor as Ned leaned over from a chair. They looked up when Sirius came in. “Did she go up?” Remus asked, making his move on the board.

“Yeah, she went up,” Sirius answered, and he went over and laid himself down on the floor beside Remus, his head in Remus’s lap. He rubbed Remus’s knees. “They’re okay.”

“Good,” Remus said, and he smiled, appreciating Sirius’s administrations to his knees, which were far more sore than he’d let on all day. He could feel the moon’s approach bubbling beneath his skin.

So could Ned.

They continued their game of chess as Sirius fell asleep slowly against his Moony, thinking that he was looking forward to talking to James about Lily, once everything had settled down, and how maybe fate wasn’t as cruel as he’d been thinking… maybe fate just had a funny way of playing her hand.




James stirred - the smell of roses and vanilla filling his nose and he thought he might be dreaming of her and he held still, wanting the dream to materialize before he woke up, wanting to see her face… but then he realized that this was no pillow he held, and he wasn’t dreaming, and the smell was coming right from the source. His eyes opened slowly and he focused on the green stripes of her shirt, the denim blue of her romper, and he looked down to see that at some point as they slept, their fingers had knotted together on her knee, her other arm around him, his other arm around her… He stared at her fingernails, she’d painted them a natural colour with white tips and he thought how pretty and shiny they were and how he liked the little mole she had on her wrist, just a tiny dot of a thing, but a cute tiny dot. He smiled and, despite everything that had happened, he felt safe.

James closed his eyes again, too tired to even begin to think of what it meant she was there, holiding hm like this…

He knew he should be having nightmares. After seeing his house burn down like he had, after watching the holding beams crack and the home he’d always knows fall in, he should’ve had a string of the most horrible dreams he’d ever had… Yet he found himself lost in a whirlwind of colour and safe feelings that flooded him, a warmth that ran through his veins and strengthened him… as though Lily’s protection encapsulated him so completely that nothing terrible could touch him without being scorched.

Lily had his nightmares for him.

Lily dreamed of the moment she stood in the doorway staring at James. Of the moment before he put down the book, before she’d cleared her throat… when she’d stood, staring at him, at the way his shoulders were stiff and tight and all the stress and tension and wanting to go that was clear on his face… And she’d prayed for some way to comfort him, for some ability to protect him, to keep him safe from the pain he felt…

She heard a raspy voice, a familiar voice that sent shivers down her spine at the memory of it…

“It’ll cost you, Lily Evans,” the voice said.

“Any cost,” she answered boldly. “I’ll give anything I have.”

“Precious seconds, my dear,” the voice trembled over the words, “It’ll cost you precious seconds.”

“What do you need them for?” Lily asked, curious.

The voice replied, “It is not I who has need of them but another who will use them well.”

“Take them,” she’d answered boldly. “Take as many as you need.”