singing till last call

🗑️ a text that wasn’t sent. [ 12:02 pm ] James → Lily: Please promise me you’re being careful [ 12:02 pm ] James → Lily: Just want to check in, I know things haven’t been easy and I want to make sure you know I’m here for you [ 12:04 pm ] James → Lily: I know as your older brother I’m not supposed to encourage day drinking but do you want to come over and get drunk?

💡 a scared text. July 30, 2023 [ 2:43 am ] James → Lily: You weren’t scared by that movie right? July 30, 2023 [ 2:43 am ] James → Lily: Because I certainly wasn’t but I wanted to make sure you weren’t either July 30, 2023 [ 2:45 am ] James → Lily: and if you are we can totally wake up dad and sleep downstairs on the couch July 30, 2023 [ 2:56 am ] James → Lily: I’m going to take your lack of response as a yes I should go wake up dad, i’ll be right down.

send 🐢 for a mental health headcanon Prior to losing his father, James’s anxiety peaked during his fifth year at Hogwarts, only a few months before sitting his OWLs.  His own happiness had fallen to the side in order to ensure everyone else was satisfied with the person he was becoming and it felt as though he needed the best traits of not only his parents, but the grandfather and namesake he had never met. It hadn’t been easy, no matter how badly he wanted to make it look like everything in his life was just that. His carefree, lackadaisical image was vital and perfect grades and agility on the Quidditch pitch were supposed to just come easily to the golden boy. No one could know he was staying up until the early hours of the morning multiple nights in a row studying for exams and forgetting to eat   to look over his essays just one more time. It wasn’t until he had flooed home early one morning, Harry having just woken up and James needing to talk to him to ease his nerves so he could try and cram in at least a couple hours of sleep before classes, that it became evident just how bad things had gotten. He had broken down into harsh sobs and labored breaths in the middle of the common room, unable to stop until he had eventually fallen asleep right there on the floor.  It wasn’t the only time it happened, but it was the only time he let anyone see.

send 🦄 for a physical health headcanon James’s eyesight is absolutely horrendous. He was four when he got his first pair of glasses and the amount of struggles he was dealing with learning his letters and name finally clicked into place. Still, he refuses to wear them unless he absolutely has to and sure it’s caused more headaches than he cares to admit but it’s still better than admitting he’s lost them again. 

James did this to himself; he had spent the past four months refusing to acknowledge himself feeling anything other than perfectly fine and now after nearly four months of going on as such it seemed as if people were finally starting to believe it. Were starting to leave him a little longer every week without the lingering looks of pity or asking how he was doing. But he had always been the type to purposefully put more and more on his plate whenever he felt life was getting too much to handle, refusing to stop and accept the fact that no one was happy or perfect one-hundred percent of the time. And of course Harry had been the only one who could ever talk any sense into him when he got like this ( the great OWLs breakdown of 2020 only one example of just how badly James relied on his father to keep himself sane ) but that wasn’t an option anymore. 

 Instead James could only laugh into the glass of firewhiskey he had been holding at his own memory of his teenaged self sobbing into the fireplace in the Hufflepuff Common Room, determined he would never make anything of himself. No one had been allowed to see the debilitating anxiety that came along with exam time but his father, who he was all but certain told his mother later. Now all he could do was plaster on a smile and try to guess what Harry would say before anyone else could catch onto the fact that anything was wrong in the first place. He’d probably tell him drinking his emotions away was the wrong way to deal with them. Then give him some old story to help him feel less alone. Just the concept of it sounded nice.

This year he was back  at the castle, working in what he had never even realized was his dream career until he had gotten into the classroom and everything had become more of mess than he could even comprehend. It made him wonder if this is what his parents had felt all those years ago, when they were even younger than James is now and things had begun to get bad like this. He downed the contents of his glass, waving to the bartender for another round before looking towards the figure who appeared next to him. 

“Whoever decided it would be a good idea to let me teach children is absolutely fucking bonkers. Could you imagine walking in for a butterbeer and seeing McGonagall stumbling across the bloody room every time she needed the toilet?” He turned slightly in his seat hiccupping slightly and throwing his hand up towards his mouth, eyes widening in shock. He only moved his hand again to grab the new drink next to him, swirling it around slightly. “You know I don’t...” he paused for a moment, struggling to find his next words. “I haven’t stumbled anywhere because I’m completely fine but hypothetically. You know?”

AFTER a week and a half with Phoenix, Pippa begins to feel the fog behind her eyes lift.  Her chest starts to OPEN UP, her lungs allow air in more freely, her body stops SHAKING uncontrollably, she sleeps through the night for the first time in months. Her head starts to play with the idea that maybe, just maybe, her family home is not the best place for her. that maybe her mother’s intentions are not pure of heart. 

BUT AFTER A WEEK AND A HALF, she becomes aware that there is only so much time she can spend HIDING. She knows that while she sits in her brother’s flat, the war outside rages on, and she cannot continue to run from it, not with the role she has been handed, the part she is expected to play. So on day 11, Pippa sits at the kitchen table with a bowl of cheerios and a small bag at her feet. ‘‘ Mornin’, ’’ she says when Phoenix walks in, ‘‘ wanna cuppa? ’’

@expcllicrmus​

Having Pippa around was immensely comforting in a way that Phoenix didn’t quite know how to describe. Their entire lives they had taken everything on together, even when they turned eleven and went off to Hogwarts, placed in separate houses, they still leaned on each other to get through the hands they had been dealt. Now it felt like they didn’t have that anymore and Phoenix had slowly been falling apart at the seems without his twin by his side to comfort and be comforted by. 

It was why he was so quick to zero in on the bag by her legs, but chose not to say something just yet. He needed to figure out what was next, he knew this. But that didn’t mean he was entirely against begging her to leave their mother and stay with him. “Morning.” Phoenix yawned, wiping at his eyes as he nodded. “Please.”

LOCATION: DAPHNES OFFICE. 

WHO: DAPHNE AND PHOENIX.

Daphne sits at her desk, reading through various pieces for tomorrow’s paper, a look of ANNOYANCE is painted on her face. clearly everyone at this paper, bar her, is completely incompetent. The door opens with a creak and Daphne barely looks up, her eyes rolling to the heavens. ‘‘ well, if it isn’t the son who swore he would never abandon or disappoint me. ’’ it’s laced with sarcasm, exudes coldness. Silence follows for a few seconds before she removes her reading glasses, looking up to meet his eyes ‘‘ what do you want, Phoenix? ’’

@expcllicrmus​

Phoenix couldn’t for the life of him, piece together exactly what the reasoning was that brought him here, hesitantly making way into his mother’s office, but the moment he laid eyes on her he felt uncomfortably small in that way he had been trying to avoid since he left home. “Mother- I...” he paused for a moment, glancing down towards her desk. “I shouldn’t have left you, I just wanted to apologize for- for being a disappointment to you. For not doing better. I want to do better.”

“Yes. I know that’s selfish, but I don’t really care. I would swap and bring my dad back without a second thought. We all need him a lot more than anyone needs me. I need him more than anyone needs me.”

“I’m still afraid of not being one of them. And want to keep them happy so just maybe they’ll leave my dads alone despite their bloodstatuses. I’m still terrified of what my birth father would do to me if he ever gets out of Azkaban and being in the death eaters hasn’t stopped being the solution to any of those problems.” They ran their hand over their face, rubbing their eyes as they continued to speak. “But that isn’t the most important thing anymore. I don’t want to be in this anymore, but they’re going to hate me when they find out and I can’t leave. I just can’t, even if I hate myself for joining in the first place.”

“I’m upset he’s not who I thought he was. Maybe that’s a copout, I don’t know but I just can’t fathom the idea of him not having a reason for everything he’s done. I’m not sure what that reason is but he has to have a really good one. We’re doing the right thing. Dad wouldn’t have made me do this if it was something I wouldn’t be proud of both of us for someday.”

“I guess it isn’t a huge secret,” James shrugged, biting his lower lip as he chuckled slightly. “I mean, quite a few people know about Mr. Woof and a couple of them know he still gets a spot in my bed. But is it really that wrong to bring your stuffed animal with you places? He’s been keeping my bed safe for twenty-five years and has done a stand up-job.”

“The summer going into my fourth year I snuck out constantly.” Fiorella grabbed a strand of her hand, staring at it for a moment before pushing it back out of the way again, glancing downwards. “This one night towards the end of that summer I made friends with a group of muggle kids a few years older than me and decided to spend the night at one of their houses. I mean it sounds stupid now but... they had beer and I thought I had magic and they don’t, what was the worst that could have happened. I don’t know, we had fun and I learned about some really cool muggle bands I had never heard of before so that was pretty cool. “