Here We Go Again

Chapter 24: Stay

POV: James

Her eyes were green. They were green, not like emeralds, but like the blooming fields on a summer day. They were glowing with life, shining bright, that he saw all the riddles of life answered with clarity in them. Their light was a compass to his real home, to the north star. They were absolutely beautiful, so breathtaking.

'Stop staring at me that way.'

'Can't.'

'And why's that?'

'You've got me hooked, for one.'

There was a small, twinkle of a laugh. 'Oh, you charmer. What's the second reason?'

'I love you.'

A smile accompanied that laugh. 'Do you really?'

'Of course.'

'Positive about it?'

'I've loved you since I was twelve years old. I know that sounds properly creepy, but it's true. I knew then that you were the one.'

That smile dimmed. '...But I'm not the one.'

' are.'

Hair as black as night flowed with the wind when she shook her head at him. 'I'm not real, James.'

He reached for her hand, ignored the coldness of it, and squeezed her fingers tightly. 'You seem pretty real to me.'

That smiled dimmed some more. Her fingers gave his a squeeze back. 'I like this,' she said to him in a small whisper, 'us together in a dream.'

'It's not a dream,' he reprimanded.

'Nothing hurts here, James,' she said to him despite the frown growing on my face. 'If I close my eyes, everything is peaceful. I don't feel it anymore...That guilt. It's gone. I'm happy.'

He saw the corner of her mouth about to pull on another smile. 'Good,' he replied, pulling on a grin of his own. 'I want you to be happy.'

Her lips never did form a smile, though. '...Then go,' she breathed quietly. He thought it was a trick of the echoing room they were in. He was going to dismiss it as nonsense, but she kept talking. She talked to him in hushed whispers; afraid that if she said them loudly then the walls would break. 'Let me go, James. Let me go and start your life.'

His other hand went to grab onto the one he was already holding. 'You're talking rubbish, love. I would never let you go.'

'You have to.'

'No.'

'James, please...'

'Why the hell would I do that?'

'Because you need to start your life. You need to live.'

'You are my life.'

'No, James, I'm not.'

'Rubbish.'

'James,' she squeezed his hand so tightly that he had to refocus on those emerald eyes of hers. 'You need to go. Understand that.'

'Why? Don't...Don't you love me?'

A tear rolled down her left cheek. 'I love you more than anything.'

'Then?'

One tear then turned to streams wetting her cheeks and splashing down her neck. 'I'm dead, James. I'm gone.'

He stared skeptically at her. 'You're not dead.'

'I am.'

'You're not dead.'

'James...'

His hands left hers so he could grab onto her shoulders. He picked her up from her seat on a single table inside the white room and shook her roughly. 'You're not dead!'

Though she was crying, she managed a smile. 'Goodbye, James Potter.' And the body he was holding faded into the walls.

He frantically turned in all directions. There was no door, no windows; where'd she go?

He rushed to one of the windows and started banging it with his fists. Before he could throw a kick at it in hopes that it would crumble, he was yanked away from the wall and started shaking. The white of the room started fading and he was screaming...

"James! James!"

Eyes blinking wildly, I was being roughly shaken by two hands on my shoulders. The hectic movement didn't stop after I groaned, nor when my forehead roughly hit the tabletop that had been serving as my pillow previously.

"Louis, stop, you idiot!" The hands that were abusing me disappeared. "He's awake now!"

Giving it a few seconds to stop the dizzying whiplash that had rudely awaken me from my nap, I turned in an angle and saw two Seventh Year Gryffindors a few feet away from me: Louis, my blonde veela cousin, and Coral McLaggen, his girlfriend.

"I got impatient," Louis told her.

McLaggen frowned disapprovingly at him, her arms crossed over her chest. She reminded me of the women in our family when they were about to scold Louis, Freddie, and I. I didn't know of Louis' future plans with McLaggen, but if he decided to marry her, she'd fit right in.

"That's exactly your problem," his dark haired girlfriend reprimanded. "You don't know how to wait."

Louis frowned back. "What the hell are you talking about? I'm the most patient bloke in the world!" McLaggen scoffed. "You don't know James like I do! He sleeps through anything; I had to be—"

"Oi," I hissed at them, long forgetting the headache that was constricting my brain due to the bang it took. "This is no place for your relationship problems. Keep quiet or get out."

Taking a deep breath to relieve her of her annoyance, McLaggen flicked her wand to close the doors of the Hospital Wing. She started walking towards me after handing her wand to her blonde boyfriend; she reached into her schoolbag and pulled out a stack of parchment. "Professor Longbottom told us to bring you your coursework," she handed the stack to me. "And we also wanted to see how things are."

I gave the homework a disgusted look and just tossed it carelessly on the tableside next to the bed I was keeping watch over. "Thanks," I mumbled.

Louis made his way to me, stopping right where his girlfriend was standing. He looked at her for a moment, then at the bed, and then at me. When his eyes met mine, the blue in them looked torn between being sympathetic and taking pity on me. Louis was my best friend, my cousin, and I knew that my pain was his. For the past two weeks he'd been the constant face that I saw; no one else seemed to be able to endure the spiral of misery surrounding me and the Hospital Wing. Not Louis, though. If I was going to suffer, he was going to suffer right along with me.

I gave him the closest thing to a smile that I was capable of producing before turning to address his girlfriend. "Thanks for coming, Coral," my voice was small nowadays, "it means a lot. I know Em...I know E-Emily is very fond of you."

My stutter at the name made her eyes sad. "And I'm very fond of her, James. She's the sweetest girl I've ever met."

I nodded my head, tears welling up in my eyes as a lump formed in the middle of my throat. Looking away from her and Louis, my focus was on the bed I was sitting loyally beside. My right hand extended towards the rigid and sleeping person on it; my hand grabbed her pale and cold one. My heart broke at the lack of warmth and the squeeze to the fingers that I never got. I was holding my girlfriend's hand, I was holding my entire world, and yet...it was cold and without electricity.

"She's going to be fine, mate," whispered Louis from the background. "She's a strong girl. She's going to make it."

My free hand balled into a fist. "She tried to kill herself," I interjected past my gritted teeth as I kept focusing on the pale figure before me. "She's not strong." I was angry. I am not going to say that that anger was shocking, that it was coming out of nowhere, because that would be a lie. I have been angry for two weeks now.

"James—"

"You know what kills me?" I turned to them, that lump in my throat painful and those tears burning my eyes. "That I bought it. I bought her stories of getting better, of being happy—how could I be such an idiot? She smiled at me and I wanted to believe that I was doing my job, that I was making her happy. But she tried to kill herself. I failed."

While Louis zipped his lips tight, looking uncomfortable with the amount of anger in my voice and the sadness in his eyes, McLaggen took the chance to speak. "Don't start blaming yourself," she said with the same authoritative tone she had been previously been speaking to Louis with. "This is not your fault."

"It is."

"It's not!" She took a moment to register that she had practically shouted, but then she continued on. "Look, you've been a brilliant boyfriend, Potter. No one can deny that. You made her smile, made her laugh, and loved her with everything you got. But this...Her suicide attempt is all on her. She has problems that no one on the planet can fix other than her. And if she couldn't fix them herself, you couldn't have either."

Louis instantly put a hand on his girlfriend's shoulder. "Coral," he sounded firm now, "don't."

"You're going to let him believe he's the one to blame?" the Gryffindor witch retaliated. "He didn't put her on that hospital bed, she did that herself."

I know Louis was expecting me to explode into a hectic, furious tornado, but that's not what happened. In a way, I did blame myself for not making her happy. I am her boyfriend, I should have been able to help her move past all the nightmares she had to live with and the horrible memories from the past that she carried with her. I should have been able to help her carry her baggage. The reality of all of this, what was killing me, ripping me centimeter by painful centimeter, was that I never had that power.

The reality is that she put herself on the brim of death. And that hurt more than anyone could imagine.

She wanted to leave this world, and in the process, leave me.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Though my sight was glazed over with tears that I didn't want to shed in front of McLaggen and Louis, I didn't have to see who it was that was making those loud steps with their heels. There was only one person who came into the Hospital Wing with their racket at this hour—my mother.

"Louis, why don't you and your girlfriend go and take some fresh air before the Headmistress calls curfew?"

"Coral didn't mean any offense, Aunt Gin," defended my cousin in a murmur filled with guilt.

Though the haze of tears I saw Mum smile at her nephew. "I know, Louis. But, honestly, sweetheart, it's not a good time right now. Now go on. I promise that you'll talk to James later on tonight when he heads back to his dormitory."

Louis and Coral both gave my mother a kiss on the cheek before hurriedly walking to the doors in order to leave. Louis looked back at me before he followed his girlfriend out, but nothing else was said from him.

After having my tears in control, I frowned at my mother as I said, "I'm not leaving the Hospital Wing if it's not with Emily by my side."

Accio-ing a chair to her from another bed in the Hospital Wing, my mother gave me a hard gaze. "How long do you plan on keeping this up, James? You've been in here for two weeks now. The Headmistress is losing patience with you and the fact that you've been missing your lessons. It's your last year here, James, you've got to attend class."

"Does it look like I give a damn about attending class?" I snapped.

Of course I chose the wrong way to speak to Ginny Potter because her terrifying scowl was suggesting my disrespect. Her temper was not one to mess with, and I knew that from the other side of Emily's bedside, with just a blink of her eyes, she could kill me.

"I know you love her," Mum said in a terrifying calm tone, "but you have priorities, do you understand? I know you want to be—"

"Is that the same thing you thought when you wanted to help Dad during the war?" I interrupted. I know I should watch the way I was speaking to her, but I didn't want her to be a hypocrite, either. "I know the stories, Mum; I've heard them all. You were willing to leave Hogwarts, even your family, to go after Dad. You wanted to spend every moment with him because you were scared that one day he wouldn't make it. It's the same from me...Except I'm holding the hand of the girl I love while she's in between life and death."

"It's not the same," she begun. Before she could continue with that statement, though, she paused. Her brown eyes met mine, the same shape and color that I had, and we stared at one another for a long second. I saw her frustration crawl back into its cage. "You're just like your father," she huffed, "and like myself, I reckon. We never have obeyed rules when it comes to love."

I nodded. If there was one way I could subdue my mother, it was by reminding her that I was her child and that the annoying, frustrating characteristics I had came from her and the man she loved more than herself.

"The reason I'm here is not to reprimand you for missing class," she started speaking again before silence engulfed us. "A legal situation came up that McGonagall wanted me to handle personally regarding Emily."

I gave her a questioning look.

"Nick Taylor, Emily's brother, has been refusing to meet with the Headmistress. She wanted Harry to go to Mister Taylor and talk to him, to tell him of the importance of Emily's case at the moment, but your father had no luck. The man refuses to step foot onto magical land. So, McGonagall went to London herself, but she didn't get the outcome we were expecting."

I hated that man. He was so prejudice against magic that it didn't surprise me in the least that he wouldn't even come to Hogwarts to visit his little sister.

"James," Mum breathed, "Emily's brother wants her locked up in St. Mungo's."

I bolted out of my chair, but I didn't let go of Emily's hand. "What the fuck does that even mean?!"

"Sit down," Mum hissed. "Sit or I'm not telling you another word!"

I complied. "Tell me."

"Her brother thinks it's best for Emily if she was under the careful watch of the Healers. He wanted to send her to a mental hospital for muggles, but with her magic, he was afraid that she'd be a menace to others. He told McGonagall all this, and...And he said that he expected the paperwork to be filed so Emily could be sent as soon as possible to St. Mungo's. He wants her to remain there until she's seventeen, her legal age in the magical world, before there's even consideration of letting her out."

My head was shaking in denial throughout her whole explanation. "No," I glared as I hissed, "she's not going. He's not taking her!"

"James—"

"It's the right thing." My eyes widened when choked, groggy words filled the room and we registered that voice to belong to only one other person. "I should be locked away, James...It'll be fine."

As my heart pounded, as my heart felt like it was going to jump out of its place to explode out of my chest and shatter across the room, I had to take a deep breath before looking at the pair of emerald eyes that hadn't opened in days.

The beautiful shade of green of her orbs were drowning by the purple, bruise-like color underneath her eyes that mixed with her pallid skin color. She tried to pull her hand away from me, but for some reason, by fingers were gripping with force. She glanced down at her arms and the bandages wrapped around both her wrists. Tears fell down her cheeks and she took a deep breath, too.

"I'm s-so sorry, James," she murmured, her gaze still locked on the bandaged wrists that she had sliced open. "I tried," she continued with her breathy words, "but I couldn't anymore. I was so tired...so exhausted from feeling everything that I feel. I just...I just wanted the voices in my head to stop. I just wanted to stop."

My left hand went to her face as my right one continued clutching her fingers. I was afraid that if I were to let go she'd disappear; that she'd go back to her comatose state and that I'd never get to hear her voice, see her eyes...

"It's okay, Em. You don't have to say anything."

She turned her face away from my hand. "I need help, James," she cried painfully that the room felt like it was constricting the air from us. Then her eyes did meet mine and I wanted to crawl into a hole. That heartbroken vision of her was torturing me. "I'm a threat to myself, can't you see? As long as I'm living, I'll keep wanting to hurt myself. I need to go...I can't do this alone—"

"You have me! I would never leave you alone, you know that!"

"No, stop!" She tried to pull her hand away from mine again, this time using her free one to shove me away. "Get away from me!"

Someone came up from behind me and somehow managed to stab me in the heart at the same time they were using the torture curse on me. That's how her words felt, her actions, her expression—I was dying.

My chest was heaving in panic, my eyes wide in that dizzying, frantic emotion. "No," I cried back, "what are you...No!"

"I can't keep letting you suffer this way," said Emily through her tears. She wasn't pulling away from me, now she was using both her hands to hold onto mine. She saw my panic, my raw fear, and she couldn't let go. "You deserve so much more, James. Please...Please see that. I'm broken, you can't fix me. I can't...Move on, James. You don't need me."

"Everyone has to stop telling me what to do when it comes to you!" I shouted at her. Angrily, I shoved her hands away from me and stood from my chair. I towered over her and glared with all the resolution, all the anger I had in my body. "I don't want anyone else and I'm not leaving you!"

"You're wasting your time on me, James. I can't—"

"I fucking love you, Taylor! Don't you love me?!"

More tears splashed onto her cheeks and she fell silent. The room was growing with tension, with strong emotions, but her face was also gaining a pink hue. Warm tones other than white were starting to light her up again.

After what seemed like an eternity later, she parted her lips to say, "I do...I love you."

Forcing all that rage to settle, I approached her bed and leaned down to her. My hands grabbed the sides of her face and my forehead touched hers. She might have been in deep sleep for two weeks, but the natural scent of her skin, something that smelled so close to sweet, flower petals, embraced me. Her skin, her smell, her beating heart beneath me was welcoming me home.

"Don't leave me," I whispered through the emotions collecting in my throat, "because I would never leave you. I don't care about the monsters in your head, what I care about for is the love and compassion in your heart. We'll figure out the rest. Just don't leave me."

Her hands wrapped around my waist and held on tightly. "There's no choice, I have to..."

I shook my head. "I'm not letting them take you."

"You don't have to go anywhere." Forgetting that Mum was in the room, too, I closed my eyes and let her speak as every protective cell in my body was trying to come out to cage around my girlfriend. "You should know better than to ever think that we would leave you alone. You are our family; we will never abandon you."

Unwillingly, I opened my eyes and turned to the redhead woman inside the Hospital Wing with Emily and I. "It's too early for you to end up in the insane ward of St. Mungo's, Mum."

"I gave birth to an idiot," she mumbled passingly as she approached closer to us. She frowned at me, but then turned to the girl beneath me. "I managed to persuade Nick Taylor to do something beneficial for you for once in his life, Emily. He gave us the chance to help you; Harry and I now have all rights and legal custody over you."

My American and I both stopped breathing as Mum pulled out an envelope from inside the cloak she was wearing. She raised it in the air, waved it slightly, and she beamed with pride.

That envelope was Emily's ticket to a new start. We were starting over, together.