James blinked awake into darkness.
For he existed in confusion, suspended between sleep and waking, the remnants of a dream clinging to him—shifting shapes, the metallic tang of blood. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the chair beside Evan’s bed. He didn’t remember closing his eyes.
There was a glow in the air above Evan’s body, orange and insistent. One of the monitoring spells pulsing in the dark room.
James was on his feet at once, the last of his drowsiness burning away as he leaned over the bed. He lit his wand, flooding the room with sudden light. Evan’s face was pale, a sheen of sweat clinging to his skin.
James’s stomach twisted.
A fever. James reached out and laid his fingers gingerly against Evan’s brow. Warm. Too warm. Damp beneath his touch.
“Shit,” James muttered. He knew enough to know this wasn’t good. Fever meant infection, meant complications, meant things slipping out of control. He pulled back and headed for the door, his watch flashing the time as he passed—just after half four in the morning. The house was silent as he padded down the corridor, his footsteps loud in the quiet hall. There was a sliver of warm light spilling through the kitchen door, left half open. Voices drifted out, low and indistinct.
His mother’s voice reached him first.
“—she’d be so furious if she were here.”
The sadness in her tone stopped him cold just outside the door. It was raw in a way James had almost never heard. There was a faint hitch, a sniff, and his chest tightened sharply. He could count on one hand the number of times he had seen his mother cry.
Another voice answered, and to his surprise it wasn’t his father’s. It was Mippy’s.
“Mistress must not be blaming herself for the evilness of others,” The elf said, her high, earnest squeak carrying clearly through the gap in the door.
A soft sigh followed.
“Perhaps,” his mother said, more tired than convinced. “Though that’s easier said than done, I think.”
Mippy replied at once, gentler now. “He is looking just like her.”
“Yes,” his mother said, and her voice was steadier, still said but there was warmth in it and James thought it sounded almost as if she were smiling. “He does, doesn’t he? I thought so too.” Then, the sound of a mug being placed on a the table, his mother’s voice again, “history does have a funny way of repeating itself, Mippy. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised—”
James, remembering suddenly why he had been in search of his mother, pushed open the door. His mother sat at the long kitchen table, her glasses perched on top of her head, a mug of coffee cradled between her hands. Mippy sat opposite her, small legs dangling comically from the stool, feet a good foot off the rung.
They both looked up.
Surprise flickered across his mother’s face, quickly replaced by a faint frown. “Is everything alright?”
Her voice was steady—but there was an unnatural brightness in her dark eyes. James hesitated, just for a fraction of a second, wondering at the snippet of conversation he’d overheard. Then he shook it off, Evan needed medical attention, he shouldn’t be wasting time.
“He’s got a fever,” James said. “One of the spells woke me up.”
His mother was on her feet before he’d finished speaking, the mug left abandoned on the table as she brushed past him without a word, already reaching for her wand. Mippy trotting after her, ears pricked and alert.
James followed, hovering uselessly in the doorway while his mother leaned over Evan, her sleeves rolled up and wand moving in quick efficient patterns. After what felt like an age—though his watch told him it had only been twenty minutes—the orange glow surrounding Evan began to fade.
His mother straightened, clicking her tongue softly.
“Not ideal,” she said.
She didn’t sound worried exactly. But she didn’t sound pleased either.
“What is it?” James asked at once.
She looked up at him from where she sat perched on the edge of the bed. “He’s too weak to fight off the infection naturally,” she said. “Not surprising, really, given the state he was in. But it does mean we’ll have to rely on potions to do the work for him.”
She sighed, then turned her attention to Mippy.
“You’d better go and wake Monty, Mippy. I suspect he’s fallen asleep in the study again. Tell him I don’t have enough Greywillow Draught to last the day, and that he’ll need to start brewing a fresh batch as soon as he can. And fetch the rest of my Belladorm Essence while you’re at it.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Mippy said promptly, nodding. “Mippy will see to it at once.”
She vanished with a soft crack.
James’s mother turned back to him then, her expression gentler but no less firm. “Go and get some sleep, love. You can’t have had more than an hour or two.”
James shook his head. The very idea felt distant, unreal. Sleep seemed impossibly far away.
She sighed, but didn’t argue. “Alright,” she said instead. “Then at least go and shower. And have some breakfast. You won’t be any use to anyone if you keel over.”
James nodded and forced himself to move, tearing his gaze away from the bed and the unconscious Evan lying in it.
He stood beneath the hot spray of the shower for what felt like an eternity, letting his forehead rest against the cool tile, eyes closed, breathing slow and deliberate. He did his best not to think.
There were a dozen things he knew he should be thinking about, but they slid away from him the moment he tried to grasp them. Everything felt distant, blurred at the edges. His thoughts skittered and scattered, refusing to settle on anything for more than a heartbeat—anything except the events of the day before, and Evan still, and motionless downstairs.
The first grey shimmer of daylight was creeping into the sky by the time James finally stepped out of the shower. He paused in the doorway of his old bedroom, towel slung low around his hips, and looked around. A shrine to his teenage self. A version of him that felt impossibly far away now. The faded Chudley Cannons poster still clung to one wall. His Quidditch gloves sat abandoned on the dresser, curled and worn. Photographs of him and Sirius, Remus and Peter were stuck haphazardly above the bed, grinning faces laughing, their arms thrown around each other.
The bed was made—navy sheets pulled smooth, duvet straightened. Lily must have slept in one of the guest rooms. James realised then that he hadn’t seen her since they’d moved Evan upstairs. The thought surfaced dimly, followed by the sense that he should probably find her.
Lily was in the kitchen, a mug of tea cooling between her hands, a half-eaten piece of toast abandoned on the plate in front of her.
“Hi,” James said, lowering himself into the chair opposite her.
“Hi,” Lily replied.
Her tone wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even unkind. But it was distant. It was the voice you used with a colleague. Professional. Neutral.
“I remember him,” she said after a moment, eyes fixed on the contents of her mug, “from school. He was on the Slytherin quidditch team.”
It wasn’t a question but James answered anyway. “Yeah,” said James, “his name is Evan.”
“Yes,” she said. “Evan Rosier. I remember.” She still wasn’t looking at him. “He’s the friend you told me about, the one you said you’d been working with isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” James said quietly.
“How is he?” she asked.
“He spiked a fever around four this morning,” James said. “Mum’s with him now.”
Lily nodded. Said nothing.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For helping yesterday.”
Lily’s green eyes finally lifted to his. “I will give aid to the wounded and the sick,” she said. “I will not withhold healing where it is within my power, nor allow fear, favour, or judgment to stay my hand. This I swear, so long as I carry a wand.”
James blinked, taken aback by the formality of her words.
“That’s the healer’s oath,” Lily continued. “I took it. Your mother took it. Every healer does. That’s why I helped.”
She pushed her mug away with deliberate care.
“Because it’s my job. Because I swore an oath. And because—unlike you—I keep my promises.” Her eyes bore into his, and he could see the anger there, anger and something else, something like betrayal, “you told me he wasn’t one of them. You lied to me, James. Again. After you promised you wouldn’t.”
Understanding clicked into place, sharp and belated.
“He’s not, Lil,” James said, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “He’s not really one of them—”
“The mark on his arm would suggest otherwise.”
James had no answer ready for that.
“Moody doesn’t know about him, does he?” Lily asked.
“No,” James admitted.
She nodded, as though she had already known the answer.
“You need to tell him. If Rosier is who you seem to believe he is, then he should want to help.” She stood abruptly. The scrape of its legs against the floor sounded harsh in the quiet kitchen. “I’m going back to the cottage,” she said. “I think it would be best if you stayed here for a while.”
James opened his mouth, searching for something to say—something conciliatory, something that might soften the set of her shoulders, the distance in her eyes. An explanation. A promise. Anything.
Nothing came.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She stared at him for a long moment and then said, “that’s not good enough. I can’t be with someone I can’t trust. And right now I don’t trust you—if you want to fix that you’re going to have to figure out a way to show me that I can.”
And then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her.
James stayed where he was, alone at the kitchen table, Lily’s words settling around him like something dense and immovable. He knew, abstractly, that he ought to be doing something, planning, maybe panicking, but he wasn’t. Instead there was only exhaustion—bone-deep, hollowing.
Eventually he stood and went upstairs. He considered obeying his mother’s instructions, trying to sleep, but the thought of it felt impossible. Instead he pushed open the door to Evan’s room and reclaimed the armchair beside the bed.
His mother did not speak. She looked up when he entered, met his eyes briefly, then returned to work. James was grateful for that—for the absence of questions, of demands, of any expectation that he explain himself or think or decide. Grateful that she let him sit there quietly, and simply exist.
At some point James fell asleep, the sky beyond the window darkening as evening drew in. He woke with a slow roll of his neck, stiff and aching from having barely moved. The room was warm; someone—his mother, or perhaps Mippy—had lit the fire, and the walls glowed with a low, flickering orange.
His mother was nowhere in sight. Mippy, however, sat perched on a stool by the window, small hands flashing as her knitting needles clicked softly together.
“How long was I asleep?” James asked.
Mippy paused mid-stitch and looked at him. “Not long enough, Mippy is thinking,” she said, her tennis-ball-sized eyes creasing with concern. “Master should be resting properly.”
James smiled faintly. “I’m alright, Mippy. Where’s Mum?”
“Mistress is having a nap,” Mippy said. “She is leaving Mippy in charge.”
James nodded. Mippy had belonged to his mother’s family since she was a girl and had come with her when she married. She had been at his mother’s side through all her training and her long years running a ward at St Mungo’s, and his mother had said more than once—usually with a mix of pride and fury—that Mippy was twice as capable as half her junior staff, and that it was an outright scandal St Mungo’s would not even consider elves as healers.
Evan was in good hands. Small hands, perhaps, but good ones.
“How is he?” James asked quietly.
Mippy lifted one tiny shoulder. “Mippy is thinking he is very lucky—”
James nodded. He needed no reminding of how close Evan had come to dying.
The elf hopped down from her stool. “Master is alright to watch him now?” she asked. “Mippy is wanting to start dinner. She is worrying Mistress has not eaten a proper meal today.”
“Of course,” James said. “Thank you, Mippy. I don’t know what any of us would do without you.”
Mippy beamed, then carefully talked him through the row of vials beside the bed—what each was for, which could be given if Evan woke in pain, and when the next doses of fever-reducing, anti-infection, and sleeping potions were due. James listened closely, nodding, fixing it all in his mind.
An hour later his mother returned to check Evan’s vitals. Mippy followed soon after to administer more potions and press a plate of food into James’s hands. After that, time thinned. James slipped into a kind of half-trance—not asleep, but slowed, his thoughts dulled to the soft crackle of the fire.
Around one in the morning, Evan’s breathing changed. It was subtle—small enough that James might have missed it, had he not become attuned to the steady rhythm of it in the quiet room.
Evan was awake.
James knew it before Evan moved. Something in the room had shifted, the silence tightening, the air drawing taut around the bed.
“Hey,” James said quietly.
Evan tried to sit up. James was already moving, a hand at his shoulder, firm but careful.
“No,” he said. “Don’t. Not yet.”
Evan let himself be pressed back, breath hitching in pain. His gaze slid to the bedside table, to the jug of water. James followed it, poured a glass, lifted it to his lips. Evan drank slowly, grimacing at the effort. When he was done, James set the glass aside.
Evan looked at him properly then. His expression was neutral, blue eyes sharp and assessing. “Tell me,” he said, “that you didn’t drag me to the Order.”
“You were dying,” James said. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like that — raw, unguarded — but it slipped out anyway.
Evan’s mouth twitched. He looked away for a minute and James felt something in him tighten uncomfortably. But then Evan looked back at James, and the edge in his eyes had dulled—not softened, exactly, but blunted, as though he’d chosen not to push it any further.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“My parents’,” James said. “Five miles outside High Wycombe.”
Evan shifted, as if to sit up again. Pain cut him off. He sucked in a breath—sharp, broken—his hand tightening in the sheets before he forced himself still.
James reached for one of the vials beside the bed and uncorked it.
“No,” Evan said.
“Evan—” James started.
“I don’t need it,” Evan said.
“Yes,” James replied. “You do.”
Evan’s gaze slid to the door. Just for a second. It was enough.
James understood.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere. I won’t let anything happen. Just take it, yeah?”
Evan’s eyes searched James’s face, sharp even through the fog of pain, and then after a long moment, he nodded. Barely.
James lifted the vial to his mouth. Evan drank, slow and uneven. When it was empty, James set it back on the nightstand. He was about to stand from his seat on the edge of the bed—about to put space between them and reclaim the armchair—when he felt it.
Warmth. Light pressure against his hand.
James looked down.
Evan’s fingers had found his. For a long moment James did nothing at all. He stared at Evan’s hand where it rested against his, at the warmth of it, the golden tone of his skin still paler than it should have been, the faint dusting of light hair along his knuckles. There was a small, jagged white scar on the ring finger. James had never noticed it before.
Forty-eight hours of panic—of blood and fear and the constant, gnawing certainty that this might be the end.
He swallowed and then James turned his hand, linking his fingers with Evan’s. He kept his eyes on their joined hands when he spoke. For some reason, he couldn’t make himself look at Evan’s face.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he said quietly.
Evan didn’t answer. Instead, James felt the faintest squeeze of his fingers.
“I thought you were going to die,” said James to their hands—words coming out somewhere between a whisper and a confession.
“Yeah,” came the answer, Evan’s voice thick with sleep and the pull of the potion. “Me too tosspot.”