Author's note: It occurred to me that I have a few fics, including a multichapter, in which Lily survives that night in Godric's Hollow—but I've never been angsty and had James lives. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and you know I'm not J.K. because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment #4, Poetry Studies, Task #1: Write about something that builds up an emotion.

Warnings: Grief, canon character deaths


A Cause Left To Fight For

And all that we have will be locked into memory

Like everything that we've had before

So I will stay awake

And I'll watch the fire burning

And keep the hungry wolves from the door

—"Underwater Bride," Passenger

James startled when someone flipped the kitchen light on, squinting in the sudden light.

"And where were you?" Sirius asked. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a copy of The Daily Prophet spread open over his legs, which were propped up on the table. Remus hugged a teacup to his chest as he leaned in the doorframe of the room, his face about as pale as it usually was when the full moon was only in three days.

"Bloody hell," James swore, shielding his eyes. "What is this? An interrogation?"

"It can be," Sirius offered.

"Would it kill you to go a day without being sarcastic?" James asked.

"Probably," Sirius said. "Where in the world did you go?"

"I was—I just went out," James said. "Why? Did Harry wake up while I was gone?"

"No, of course not," Remus said. "He's the most perfect child in the world, he's sleeping soundly."

"Well there," James said. "What's the problem?"

"The problem is that you have blood on your shoes," Sirius said.

"Yes, and the last time you went out one night the next morning The Daily Prophet had this to report," Remus said, plucking the newspaper from Sirius' hands and tossing it over to James who read the page it was opened and folded at. Body of Death Eater Thorfinn Rowle left in Head Auror Rufus Scrimgeour's Front Garden Overnight.

"Not your most subtle work, Prongs," Sirius said.

"Though I would go so far as to say that this is your boldest one," Remus said, though his tone made what he thought about this accomplishment very clear.

"They haven't traced it to me," James said. "Nor will they."

"That's reassuring," Remus said.

"Yeah, totally makes up for the fact that you run away on wild vigilante hunts for Death Eaters in the night without anybody knowing," Sirius said. "That's not at all frightening, by the way."

James dropped the newspaper on the kitchen table and went to the fridge, reaching in for a carton of orange juice.

"Drink out of a glass, not the carton," Remus reminded him.

"Coming home is not as much fun when it's like being circled by vultures," James said—although he did reach into the cabinet to get a glass.

"Maybe stop coming home between the hours of 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. then," Sirius suggested.

"Who did you go after tonight?" Remus asked.

"Not important," James said before taking another gulp.

"Bullshit," Sirius said. "There's three of us left, James. We live together. We watch Harry together. What's the point in lying?"

James exhaled. He didn't want to talk about this. There was a very specific reason that he hadn't brought this up before. Even if he and Remus and Sirius were in it for the long haul now, after everything that had happened, James was the only one mourning Lily like he was mourning her now—and grief was lonely. So lonely that James figured that he was allowed to do what he had to do to surmount it alone. If that meant continuing the work that he and Lily had done and pledged themselves to when she was alive, if it meant doing what he could to take every single person who had contributed to her death even tangentially from this earth, so be it. He'd do it happily.

He looked away from Sirius and to Remus before realizing that Remus would be no help. His brown eyes were just as worried as Sirius', he was just being quieter, as Remus usually was.

"Well what am I supposed to do?" James asked, trying not to sound whiny or defensive as he said it. Part of him really wondered. What was he supposed to do at a time like this? With the hand he held?

"The Auror Department is tracking down the remaining Death Eaters," Remus said. "Mad-Eye has told us this. He himself has faith that they'll manage to get them."

"They're taking too long," James snapped.

"That's the justice system, James…"

"When Pettigrew ratted us out, things changed like this." He snapped his fingers. "And then Voldemort came to Godric's Hollow and killed Lily like this." He snapped his fingers again. "And then he died somehow, and how quickly after that did those Death Eaters go after Alice and Frank? Before we could do anything. Like that." He snapped his fingers again and put his glass down.

"They move fast," James said. "They move fast and when they do they ruin lives. What am I supposed to do with that? Sit still knowing how…. how awful it is when they do and just live with the risk that it might happen to someone else?"

Sirius and Remus didn't answer, mostly because they had nothing to say. They had run out of things to say nearly as soon as they had arrived at Godric's Hollow, shortly after James had woken up in the wreckage of his home with a dislocated shoulder and a concussion, still dizzy and groggy from being thrown by a spell's blast and hitting his head. He had still been digging through the rubble, looking for Harry, when they had shown up. They'd helped him dig where the nursery had once been and they'd found Harry, safe and sound but badly shaken and scarred. They'd found Lily shortly after, and known from her glazed eyes and stiff limbs that there was nothing to do other than drag her away from Voldemort's corpse.

"James…"

"They move fast. Too fast. "

"I know, James," Remus said. "But you are just one man. One extremely brave man who… who is going through the unimaginable."

"Stop," James said. "Remus, I love you, but don't editorialize."

"Fine," Sirius stepped in. "I'll do the sympathetic psychoanalysis then. You're a man badly in need of a coping mechanism who has settled on vigilante justice, the most dangerous available option, which would be fine and all if it weren't so bloody fucking dangerous and, frankly, a little unhinged."

"Unhinged?" James asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Well, you're one person James. One person can't wipe the remaining Death Eaters from this earth and you're running some unnecessarily high risks by doing it alone. And, I'm going to be honest here, Lily would hate it."

"Don't bring Lily into this."

"Don't say that as if Lily isn't in everything you do and say and breathe and think," Sirius said. "You can't even hold Harry without seeing her eyes and losing your mind a little bit."

"Yeah, it's like dying a little every time," James snapped. "Thanks for the reminder, Sirius, because that really makes me feel like father of the year."

He meant it flippantly, but it hit a little bit too close to home and his voice cracked a bit.

He took a deep breath and hid his face in his hands. The others didn't know, couldn't possibly know, how badly it hurt James not only to have lost Lily but to find that he wasn't half as good at doing his favourite thing in the world—taking care of Harry—after losing her. One look at that little boy's eyes—regardless of if he was eating, playing, colouring, looking up at James from the crib… it broke his heart. It doubled his loss. It made him wish that he'd died and that she'd lived twice as hard as he normally did.

"You've always been restless and you've always needed to be doing something when there's a problem. You've always wanted to fight for what's right," Remus said quietly. "You've always wanted to do meaningful work. That's alright too. We will always love those parts of you. But you're using those things as excuses to put yourself in danger and build up some sense of… of justice when there really isn't anything out there that could make losing Lily okay."

James kept his eyes closed. He didn't want to dignify Remus' words with a response quite yet.

"And Sirius is right; it was one thing to take risks with the Order, when we worked together, but nothing good will come out of working alone. What good would it be to Harry to lose both his parents?" Remus asked. "To be left orphaned?"

"He'll still have you," James pointed out.

"You're still his father," Sirius said. "That doesn't change, just because he doesn't have a mother."

James looked away.

"That's low," James said. "Bringing Harry into this."

"We know," Remus said, somewhat apologetically. "But you're taking such risks with yourselves, we have to ask what's worth more to you. A world purged of Death Eaters or your son growing up hearing the best stories about his mother from the person who knew her best?"

James leaned against the counter and blinked away some stupidly unexpected tears from his eyes.

"If I stop doing this… I'll run out of things to do to make this better," James said. "To make this awful, rotten, despicable situation better. Then what?"

"You can mourn," Remus said.

"I've been doing that."

"You can mourn without hiding it in something else," Remus said.

"That's not nearly as tempting as serving the Dementors Severus Snape's head on a plate," James said.

"Very few things are," Sirius said wistfully. "But we'll feel better, at least, knowing that you aren't running around running the risk of getting yourself killed. There's three of us left, James. That can be our cause, now. Making sure we all make it."

James nodded, his throat dry.

"Okay," he said. "I'll… I'll stop going after them. I'll make us my cause."


WC: 1633