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Should’ve Been Me


“James… Potter…”

The words were whispered. Hissed, even. James could feel them in the air, trembling like a breeze that touched his skin. He shivered and looked around, but the words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“James…. Potter….”

“Potter.”

“Evans?”

And suddenly he’d found himself in a corridor. The corridor by the library. Lily Evans was pressed against the wall between his outstretched arms, his palms pressed to the stones on either side of her as he leaned in to kiss her... His mind spinning, whirling over all of the times he’d wanted to do this, and his eyes flitting across her lovely, plump lips, his realization that he was about to feel it’s warmth against his mouth had his heart pounding… And then, suddenly Lily Evans wasn’t Lily Evans anymore - her features melted away and it was Maryrose that was kissing him, and she’d turned back to herself from her disguise as Lily Evans only just before her mouth met his and he choked on the kiss, panicking… And she drew away, staring up at him with a look of terror on her face, her eyes wide, as though he’d betrayed her...

“I’m sorry Maryrose, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” he stammered, the wind sucked from his chest as he stared at her, her face still horrified… “Please forgive me, please! You must forgive me, I didn’t mean to kill you.”

She shook her head no and James grabbed her shoulders, set to beg her for forgiveness….

And then it wasn’t even Maryrose - it was a dementor he was holding by the shoulders and from the darkness beneath the dementor’s hood came a great sucking sound as it inhaled, drawing him closer, and he could feel himself being pulled in… and then… even that changed and he tripped forward as there was naught but thin air beneath his hands and he fell against the wall.

And when he hit the wall, the world seemed to spin and it was suddenly the floor he was laying on and the floor melted into a bed, his bed, though it was a bed he’d never seen before. It was huge, wide, and he was beneath blankets and there was a voice, calling him.

“James… Potter…”

He rolled over and his feet struck cold wood floors - floors he didn’t recognize… and he ran, jamming his glasses on his eyes as he moved through the bedroom door way, into the hall… He could hear crying and he ran toward it, the hallway growing longer and longer the more he ran… But the crying was loud and he had to get to it, and he suddenly got the idea to accio the crying person to him - a baby, he thought, it’s a baby - and he’d catch the baby and he’d make the crying stop. So he reached for his wand but it was gone. He grappled the pockets over his chest and he realized that he’d left it by the bed in his dormitory and that was all the way back at Hogwarts and here he was in Godric’s Hollow… “Blast,” he said, “Where is my wand caddy? Sirius, you’re fired!”

And Sirius had suddenly appeared - and he’d come from behind the curtains and suddenly it was Walburga Black’s library and this was not the real Sirius, it was Maryrose in disguise again and Sirius’s clothes were miles too large on her as his features melted back into hers again and James started crying and he said, “Please forgive me.”

And Maryrose said, “I love you James.”

He woke up with a start.

James looked around, his breath coming out wheezy, and found that they’d all fallen asleep… The telly was crackling with fuzzy white and black dots, casting a tremoring light around the room. Peter was sprawled across the carpet, rolled up like a burrito in his blanket. Sirius had turned into a dog at some point and curled up on the other bed ‘round an old jumper of Remus’s that had been left out in the Shack at some point - maybe the month before. And there on the bed beside James, separated by the wall of pillows that Peter had made, was Lily Evans.

As he stared at her, he half expected her ginger hair to suddenly turn colours - half expected her to open her eyes and be Maryrose and for the nightmare to continue on...

He sat up, his hands shaking and he stared down at his knees and took deep breaths.

Lily had stirred when he woke to begin with - he’d let out a gasping sound that had been just sharp enough to break her slumber… now the motion made her stir again and her eyes fluttered open. She turned her eyes and saw James sitting up, his back to her, and his shoulders hunched. He stood up suddenly and stepped carefully around Peter and as she watched he left the room, pulling the door just to behind him.

Lily sat up and tugged one of the blankets she’d been under around her like a shawl, her fingers lost under the too-long sleeve of James’s Gryffindor jumper, and she, too, stepped carefully around Peter and followed James into the hallway. She could hear the stairs creaking and she followed him downstairs… and in the living room she found him pacing, his hands clasped behind his head as he walked to and fro and to and fro. She stood watching him a moment from the stairwell, silent, giving him a minute to breathe… and then she carefully jumped the missing step in the case and walked over to where James was. He’d come to a stop and he had crouched down and was just sitting there, his hands clutching his head, fingers woven in his hair. Lily approached slowly and gently put her palm on his shoulder.

James looked up at her, surprised to see her there, his eyes wide as he stared for a moment, then he looked back down, squeezing his eyes shut and he looked pale.

“Potter?”

He flinched at the word. It echoed in his head from his dream and his face crumpled a bit.

“On no, don’t cry. What’s the matter?” Lily asked.

“I’m not crying,” he choked out. But he was only just barely not crying.

“Okay,” Lily said, understanding he was a boy and that boys don’t like being caught at crying. “Is everything alright, then?”

“Brilliant, Evans,” he said without any gusto. His heart just wasn’t in it.

“Was it a bad dream?”

James closed his eyes.

“Whatever it was can’t hurt you anymore,” Lily whispered, meaning the dream.

“I know, that’s what’s horrible about it,” James answered, meaning Maryrose. His voice was thick, “It’s my fault, Evans, and she’s gone and she can’t forgive me.”

Lily hesitated, then inched closer and put her arm around his shoulders, kneeling down in the dust beside him. “Maryrose would’ve forgiven you.”

“She refused,” he replied, “I begged. In my dream, she was you and then she was Sirius and - and I begged, I begged and she said no, she didn’t forgive me.”

“Maybe. But that’s your brain’s version of Maryrose, that’s not the real Maryrose Jenkins, James. The real Maryrose would never have held a grudge. The real Maryrose would’ve forgiven you before you ever asked her to.” Lily’s voice carried passion in it. “James, Maryrose was my friend before she was your girlfriend. If you recall, it was me who told you who she was the first time you noticed her in the hall… I knew her pretty well. Not as well as you knew her by the time it was over, of course, but I did know her. And the thing that struck me most about Maryrose was how kind and forgiving she was.”

James’s eyes were watery as he stared at the floor boards. “You really think… even for what I’ve done?” he looked at her.

“For what you’ve done?” Lily asked.

“Let her die.”

“You didn’t.”

“I left without her, it’s the same thing. I left without knowing she was safe.”

Lily shook her head. “It’s not the same thing. You saved a little girl’s life.”

James closed his eyes.

“There was nothing else you could’ve done,” Lily said; even if she wasn’t there, she knew James Potter well enough to know that at least, at very least, that one thing was true.

James’s voice was barely a whisper, more a breath. “Should’ve been me.”

Lily replied, “No it shouldn’t.”

James said flatly, “I should have gone to distract him, not her. She should’ve gone with Lucy. Back to Hogwarts, back to safety. I should’ve stayed and faced Voldemort myself… I should’ve been the one you lot were fishing out of that bleeding cave.”

“James --”

“If I’m ever… if he ever… if it’s… if it’s me, you lot leave me there in that cave,” James said, suddenly frantic. He turned to look at me. “I don’t want you going and facing all that over me.”

“We’re not leaving you in a cave,” Lily said. Then, “You’re not going to be in that ruddy cave, ever. You’ll live forever, James Potter, you great toerag.” She said the words in a gentle manner, not a harsh one. “If for no purpose other than to annoy me everyday.”

James looked into her eyes. “Promise me, Evans.”

“Promise you what?”

“That if I ever die, if he ever puts me in that cave, that you won’t go back there.”

“You - you said we can’t anyway, that the cave is missing, remember?”

“Promise me you won’t try.”

Lily stared at him.

“C’mon, Evans, you hate me - this shouldn’t be so hard to do.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Of course you hate me,” James replied.

“I don’t.” Lily felt horrible. “You really, truly believe that, don’t you?”

He glanced at her.

“After all this. After everything we’ve been through, you truly believe on some level that I actually hate you?”

James said, “You call Pete and Sirius and Rey your brothers.”

“You are, too,” Lily said.

“I only am when you lump it up. Like you say the Marauders but you mean Pete and Sirius and Rey.”

She had done that. She had. She felt guilty and she said, “I’m sorry.”

James wasn’t done yet though. “You don’t chat with me in Potions. You run off the moment Slughorn dismisses us. You always contradict things I say or - or call me stupid or a toerag or --” he paused. “Or, tery worst of all, you ignore me altogether. I won’t get a reply. I won’t be looked at. I won’t be acknowledged.” He stared at his fingers a moment, “I won’t be… in any of your pictures…”

Lily said, “What?”

James looked up. “The pictures on your wall.”

Lily said, “James Potter. Why do you know what pictures are on my wall?”

He stared at her.

“James?”

“The rush of the challenge,” James replied, lying. “You said it couldn’t be done. And so I did it.”

“You little bugger,” she said.

“You’re not answering me again, by the way.”

Lily looked into his eyes. “I dunno why I don’t have a picture of you there. I didn’t noti--” she stopped herself, but she’d basically said the word before she could stop it.

“You didn’t notice I was missing,” he said. Then, “See?”

“It’s not that I hate you, Potter…”

He said, “It may just be worse if you’re just passively forgetting me, Evans.”

Lily didn’t know what to say. She’d never felt such a feeling as she was right then. She felt so guilty making him feel like she hated him. She hated that this wasn’t the first time he’d said this stuff and that she hadn’t listened to him before, hadn’t fixed it.

“I’m so sorry.”

James took a deep breath. “Just promise me you’ll forget me if I’m ever dead in that cave, too.”

Lily opened her mouth to say no - to refuse - when there suddenly came frantic barking from upstairs and they both looked up.