Chapter Text
🌊 JAMES 🌊
James Potter’s heart is gone.
He carved it out himself years ago. Looked at it from up close and wondered: how does something so small, so soft, so insignificant, cause so much damage? How does it destroy so thoroughly?
James didn’t have the heart to squish it to pieces then. There was a simple reason.
This heart, his heart, had loved. So fiercely. It had burned for someone until it had simply burned, fiery and painful.
This silly little organ that bore memories of love, gathered emotions and experiences like a snowball.
James could not bear it.
The heartbreak.
What can one do in the face of complete and utter destruction?
So James had carved it out.
No heart, no heartbreak.
At least, that was the idea.
James’s heart is buried in a chest, alongside gifts that belonged to them. The chest is buried in the sand. The sand belongs on an island James no longer visits. And for years, James moves on.
Until a boy with wolf-grey eyes washes up on his shore, half dead.
There is something familiar about him. Something that used to ache. A song that whispers the boy’s story between the notes. It unsettles him. But then again, everything does these days.
This is the story of a boy who loved and lost. And the story of a boy who lost, then loved.
This isn’t a happy story.
It’s a heartless one.
🌊REGULUS 🌊
The problem with love is, it’s not about love at all. If it was, there would be no problem.
The problem is that love doesn’t always suit other people. Other people like his family. People like his family, who aren’t interested in seeing him thrive. Who would rather see him dead than see him happy.
And Regulus belonged to someone, once.
Made a promise to someone.
“I will come back to you”, he had vowed, and lied.
Because Regulus couldn’t come back to them.
And Regulus tried to hold on.
But there are a few things that cannot be held on to. One of these things is life.
So Regulus was pulled under.
He wasn’t ready to die. Death wasn’t ready to take him.
🌊THE BOY WITH NO NAME 🌊
The boy wakes up with no memories of his past. He’s a boy who went to sleep, thinking he would die. Perhaps he did die. The boy doesn’t know.
All he knows is he’s alive.
He’s alive.
He is alive and someone is hovering over him, with eyes as stormy as the ocean that spit him back out.
The boy is alive, that’s all he knows.
He takes the extended hand. The skin is warm and calloused. The hold is strong, steadying.
Familiar.
He looks up. There is another boy, with eyes as dead as he should be. The boy looks ethereal, but his voice sounds odd when he speaks. Sunny and dead all at the same time, like an eclypse. There are echoes of happiness, but they’re shattered.
“Here you are.”
The tanned skin crinkles in the corner of the other boy’s eyes, and his breath catches, and his heart picks up speed.
He’s alive, and the other boy’s voice sounds like heartbreak.
The boy doesn’t know who he is, but he smiles anyway.
He feels a little less lost.