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The house is haunted, that much is certain.
James walks gingerly, his feet weighted with shock. He winces at the rattling of the shutters and the sound of a harsh wind outside, yet he also can't help but notice the oppressive silence.
It is November 1, 1981, and this is the site of the attack. This is the house that saw panic, and screaming, and death.
He looks back over his shoulder at the two men behind him. "It's true, then?"
Remus frowns and Severus sighs with annoyance.
Yes, James thinks, feeling his chest cave in. It must be true.
"This is ridiculous," says Severus petulantly, his scowl deep and earnest.
"Well, then it's ridiculous," Remus replies. "It is what it is."
"And we're here to stay, I suppose?"
"You know our orders."
"He's barking mad, Lupin. You saw him."
"I saw a man who just lost his family," says Remus softly, "and his friends. Have a heart, Severus."
"A heart? Ah, I see. He needs comforting, does he? Remarkable that I should be asked to provide it."
"Not you," Remus corrects him. "We."
"Not I." Severus's face hardens. "You, perhaps."
"All right, then." Remus scrubs his face. "Me. Perhaps."
James enters the baby's room on tiptoes, habit telling him to avoid the floorboard that creaks. Harry has ears like a hawk; he always knows when someone is coming in.
Had, James corrects himself, his veins running cold. Knew.
There is sun streaming through the window in painful yellow bands and somewhere outside, a dog barks. Remus and Snape have cleaned the room up a bit, it seems. The splinters are gone and the bruised sheets have been stripped away.
He wraps his fingers around the bars of the crib and does the only thing he can: he hangs on.
"He wants to go to the funerals," Remus announces, tapping his fingers against the door frame.
Severus looks up from his book. "Oh, for pity's sake. What did you tell him?"
"I said it's not safe; Voldemort might still be out there."
"Well, that's an understatement."
"What do you want me to do, Severus?" Remus raises his hands in the air. "You know our orders."
"Our orders, our orders," mutters Severus. "Yes, I do, and if I had anything to say about it–"
"Well, you don't," snaps Remus. "Not anymore."
Severus winces. "That," he says softly, "is also an understatement."
James has trouble counting the days. It might have been two, or six, or fifteen; there is no way to tell but to watch the icicles thicken on the tree branches.
But one night, lost in time between two and six and fifteen, he sees her.
The image is strong, plain as day: she's lying on their bed, red hair fanned out across the pillow and eyes closed in deep sleep. He stands frozen at the door, afraid to move or even breathe for fear she'll fade away.
"Lily." His lips form the syllables but no sound comes out. "Lily."
"Now he's seeing ghosts."
"No." Severus silences Remus with a finger to his lips. "Not now. I cannot talk about him. He's all you think about."
Remus shifts, fingers tracing Severus's skin. "Well, yes. But this is important."
"I'm important."
"He's my best friend."
"A best friend who doesn't trust you?"
"Don't say that. Just– don't."
"You know our orders. We have to get him out of here."
"God, we shouldn't be here," Remus whispers. His head falls to Severus's shoulder with a deep sigh.
"God," mutters Severus, his lips moving over Remus's neck, "has nothing to do with it."
When Lily begins to appear more often in James's waking vision, he worries. He knows it isn't natural; he knows he can't hold onto her forever.
She moves around the house in a slow glide, feet barely touching the floor as she appears to him in room after room – smoothing the sheets in the bedroom, mixing Harry's food in the kitchen, rocking in the old wooden chair in Harry's nursery.
He knows he can't touch her, that the ghost will vanish into thin air as soon as he tries, but he still can't help but try, over and over again.
"We have a problem," Severus announces.
"Mm?" Remus sets his half-eaten apple on the counter and waits.
Severus's eyes narrow. "What are you eating that for?"
"I like apples," insists Remus, lifting his chin.
"Yes, but–"
"What's this problem we have?" Remus interrupts.
Severus looks annoyed, mumbling something incoherent.
"You what?"
"I said, I saw her, too."
Remus stares. "You… what?"
Severus's glare turns icy, and Remus rubs at his chin.
"That is a problem." Remus pauses. "Do you think she saw you?"
"I think… getting him out of here will be much more difficult than we anticipated," Severus says.
Remus wants him to leave Godric's Hollow. It has been kind of Remus to stay (although why he had to bring Snivellus into the equation is beyond James's grasp), but leaving is not an option. He lives here.
His ghosts live here.
He can't quite bring himself to tell Remus about the ghosts, though. He wouldn't understand. He'd whisper to Snape that James is going mad. James has seen them huddled together in the sitting room; he knows they are plotting against him.
But if he can't tell, and he can't leave, then he hasn't got much left except… limbo.
"Do you remember the first time you kissed me?"
"I did nothing of the sort. You accosted me outside the potions classroom."
"I handed you a book you'd dropped, and you stuck your tongue down my throat."
"Technical details."
"Anyway." Remus turns quiet. "What would you do if you didn't have me?"
"Don't be ridiculous. I'll always have you."
"Yes, but what if you didn't?"
"I said–"
"I heard you, but you're not listening."
"What if I were in Potter's position, you mean?"
"Yes."
"You'd better not haunt me."
"I'm being serious."
"Yes." Severus sighs and turns away. "I know."
James knows he's losing his mind the night Harry appears to him, sitting on the floor of the kitchen and banging a pot while Lily sings to him and makes a sauce. He backs out of the room with his heart hammering in his chest, barely noticing Remus's strong arms as they wrap around him and keep him upright.
"Steady, Prongs," whispers Remus, and James can't feel his fingertips. "I've got you."
"You can see them?"
Remus nods.
"Can… they see us?"
"I think so. Like Nearly Headless Nick, you remember?"
Relief floods him. Yes, it's like Nick. He remembers.
"You told him what?"
"You mean it's not like Nick?"
"Lupin, honestly, did you not learn anything before–"
"Spare me the lecture, Severus, and just tell me your plan for getting him out of here."
"My plan?"
"What will it take? Do we have to fuck in front of him?"
"Not if you want me to keep an erection."
Remus grimaces. "Then what?"
"He needs to understand, Lupin, to accept what happened. The ghosts aren't his to keep."
"They aren't his to destroy, either."
"Yes," Severus says gravely, "they are. Remember: it's not like Nick."
"No." Remus shivers. "It's not."
The first time he hears Remus and Snape fucking, James covers his ears and wishes he were dead.
Hot, guilty groans float down the hallway, whispers and shushings and God, it's like they're back at Hogwarts and Remus is afraid he'll be caught wanking. James doesn't care how badly the war is going, there's no excuse for fucking Snape. He should go in there, re-introduce Snivellus to his fist, and yank his balls off besides.
But just then it occurs to him to wonder why, if Snape has been in this house all along, James has never spoken to him.
"So." James enters the sitting room with a frown and glares at Remus and Severus. "What've you given me, then?"
Remus looks up from his crossword puzzle. "Excuse me?"
"A potion, right? So I don't kill Snivellus for being here?"
Severus's mouth hardens. "Is that what you'd like to do?" he says icily.
Remus grips Severus's arm in warning. "There's no potion," he tells James. "You just… well. Maybe you're feeling differently about Severus these days."
James's face clouds with panic for a moment. He stares at Remus. "Yeah," he says at last, his voice far away. "Maybe I am."
"It's all right to be angry, you know. That we have to be here with him."
Severus opens an eye. "Yes, I realise that. Thank you, Lupin."
"So… are you?" Remus prods, shifting down the bed and giving him a pointed look.
"What, angry?"
"Mm."
"Is it important to you that I admit this?"
Remus considers. "Yes," he decides. "I'm worried about you."
"I think it's rather too late for that, don't you?"
"To be worried about you?"
"To be worried about anything," replies Severus.
Remus pauses, then surprises them both by laughing. "Yes," he agrees, "I suppose it is."
James is worried. He can't sleep; he's not hungry; he sees wisps of his dead wife and child everywhere in his house.
He remembers the stories he used to read as a child, about dark mists and forests and headless horsemen, gallant saviours and wicked spirits, stolen children and snaking vines, and in the deep of night he thinks he hears the wings of Thestrals battling gusts of wind as they glide past the house at Godric's Hollow.
The upstairs doors swing open even after he's closed them, and window panes mock him, rattling with the breath of the dead.
"Do you think we should talk to her?"
Severus blinks. "Her?"
"Well, you could try talking to the baby if you'd prefer," Remus snaps, "but Lily speaks more English. Yes, her."
"And what, precisely, would we say to her? Assuming she could even hear us."
"We would say… we're sorry."
"And what, precisely, do we have to be sorry for?"
"Could you not do that?"
"What?"
"Talk to me like I'm a child. Use 'precisely' every third word."
Snape grimaces. "Anything else?"
"No." Remus closes his eyes. "I just thought we could–"
"We can't," insists Severus. "She's not our concern."
It's not long before the headaches begin. Stabbing pains fry his vision, and James knows exactly what's causing them.
"Make her leave," he begs Remus one night, sobbing and retching on the floor. "I can't keep seeing her like this! And Harry, God, I can't–"
There's a loud clang upstairs and James pounds his fists into the carpet. "Stop it!" he screams, struggling to his feet and hurling a lamp across the room. "STOP IT!" His throat burns when he's done, and he swallows, panting, and turns to see Remus backed against the wall, his face white with terror.
"That's it." Remus storms into their room. "I'm done here."
Severus watches him.
"He's a lunatic and a danger to everyone around him. I won't stay. I can't stay." He flings some clothes into a valise.
"Lupin."
"I've seen enough violence and madness from Greyback's pack; I won't put up with it from my friends."
"Lupin."
"Tell Dumbledore I abandoned my post; see if I care."
"Lupin."
"WHAT?" Remus turns in a fury, glaring daggers at Severus.
"We can't go anywhere until he does. You know that."
For the first time since Halloween, Remus sinks to the floor and weeps.
It snows in late November, or maybe it's December. James wonders if Christmas will come this year, or if this house doesn't deserve such happiness.
He wonders how the war is going, and whether he should send word to Dumbledore that he's ready to fight again.
He wonders how Padfoot and Wormtail are doing with their missions in the south.
He wonders if he will ever fall in love again, have a new child, grow old with a new wife, and if Lily would ever forgive him if he did.
He wonders how Remus can possibly be happy with Snape.
It comes to a head the night James hears voices in the kitchen and realises Snape is speaking to Lily.
He charges through the door and grabs Snape by the throat, hurling him into a cabinet. "Stay away from her," he snarls, and Snape's eyes go wide.
"What the–" Remus appears in the doorway and quickly joins the fray. A pot from the cabinet clatters to the ground and James throws a collection of wooden spoons across at the opposite wall.
"How dare you speak to her!" he shouts, shoving Remus aside and kneeling in front of a trembling Lily.
Lily clutches the edge of the counter until it cuts. There had been a voice, a shadow of a man, speaking to her, soothing her, telling her it would all stop soon.
But it hasn't.
The voice cuts out with a gust of air from the doorway and then there is a bang, and the room turns cold as ice.
She gasps as the cabinet thumps and a pot falls out, and when the wooden spoons fly across the room, she thinks her heart might have stopped.
This is no troublemaking poltergeist like Peeves. This is something much more sinister.
Remus follows when she moves to the sitting room, James and Snape trudging behind him.
The three men watch as she walks to the mantle and lifts a small jar, her hands trembling.
"You have to leave," she whispers, cradling the jar like a baby. "I love you and I forgive you – I've told you that!" She swallows. "But you can't stay here."
She replaces it, retreats upstairs and James looks at the mantle. The jar is a faded grey but its etchings are new. He reads the name and the dates and feels his blood frost in his veins.
"Tell me," James murmurs, gripping the jar.
No. The urn.
"You remember, Prongs," says Remus from somewhere behind him, and he can almost hear Snape biting his tongue.
"No." James shakes his head. "I don't."
"Try harder," Snape barks, and James turns to the two of them.
Remus looks sad and exasperated, gripping Snape's hand and giving him a pleading look, and Snape just looks furious.
"Voldmort…" he whispers, but Remus shakes his head.
"… never came. That information was incorrect, it turned out."
"Lily…? Harry…?"
"They're still here."
Mouth gaping, James stares at them as the fog lifts. Wormtail.
Sound crashes over him like an ocean wave as his memory lifts him back and deposits him on Halloween night.
Wind growled through the open door and he stormed upstairs like a madman, Wormtail's intelligence still hot in his ears.
"It's Moony," Peter had whispered to him. "Moony and Snape – I've seen them!"
There was a war on and everyone was fighting like mad, sacrificing everything they had, everyone they loved, and Remus, Remus –
James's fists clenched and he felt the sweat rolling off his back, his face purpling with rage as he–
He couldn't hear anything anymore.
If there was activity in the attic, it shifted from sex to frantic scrambling at the sound of boots thumping up the stairs.
"Shit," Remus bit out, pushing Severus off him and fumbling for his crumpled trousers. "Lily's out. Who the fuck–"
"One of yours, I imagine," said Severus, not in the same hurry. "None of mine care where I am."
"Get dressed," Remus hissed, throwing Severus's shirt on the bed.
But by then it didn't matter; it was too late. The door banged open and James Potter stood before them, waving his wand wildly, firing curses and screaming accusations.
"TRAITOR!" he bellowed, and there was no calming him.
"James, for God's sake, listen!" Remus pleaded, dodging hexes and trying to reach his wand with one hand, holding his unfastened trousers up with the other.
"Potter! Stop–" Snape screamed right back, but James drowned him out, shoving him down with a wand to his clavicle.
"Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!"
A pause. A heartbeat. A last gulp of air and the screaming turned to sobs.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The first two, intended for the same target, had hit two different men.
The third, in grief and shock, he'd turned on himself.
"Prongs," Remus murmurs, his hand on James's back. "It's time to go."
"Yeah." James stares at the door, his eyes unfocused until his gaze lands on Severus. "You loved him, I suppose."
Severus frowns, pursing his lips in consideration. At last, he gives a stiff nod.
"Not… trying to bring down the Order."
"James," Remus whispers.
"No, just– wait. Okay." He wipes his hand across his face. "Okay. Can you ever…?" He chokes.
"Yeah," says Remus softly. "I can."
The gate clicks shut behind them, and James lowers his head.
I will walk with my hands bound into Your garden.