Sorry if I'm so forgetful

I've been stuck inside my head

Yesterday I found a stranger

Lying here, lying here in my bed.

-"Lost My Mind," Alice Kristiansen

---

June 2018

When James finally left Elise's house late Sunday afternoon, he ran home for twenty minutes to shower and change and then straight to Raigan's. He'd promised Piper he'd come for dinner and take her for ice cream. It had been their Sunday ritual in the summer for longer than Piper could remember. She had probably been just two when James had come up with the idea to give Raigan a few guaranteed minutes to herself per week since she had otherwise spent her every waking moment answering toddler 'why' questions and trying to make sense of the inarticulate requests that came out of Piper's mouth at a rate of twenty seven times per minute.

For maybe the first time, James just wasn't feeling it. He felt heavy and exhausted. As soon as he'd apparated onto the end of the walk at Raigan's house, he regretted it. He wasn't ready to sit in that bright, open kitchen and joke around with Piper and pretend that he wasn't thinking about another kid that he should've been taking out for ice cream, not instead, but also. A kid who'd be nearly Hogwarts age and probably pestering him nonstop with requests to go to Diagon Alley and pick out a wand.

James didn't go inside. He walked down the sidewalk, past the other, all muggle-owned homes in the subdivision. Two blocks down and one over, he found an empty park bench facing the toddler park and he went to sit down. As it was dinner time, the playground was pretty well abandoned except one mum packing up the stroller to take her little ones home. James gave her a weak smile as she passed, but he was relieved she was going.

He missed Elise already. There was no one else who knew. No one else he wanted to tell. Not even Raigan, because he felt guilty about hiding it from her for so long. James hadn't cried about any of it in all these years. Not losing the baby. Not losing Elise. Not even about Piper and Raigan losing the rest of their family. He just wasn't a crier. But somehow, today felt different and the tears started coming out before he could stop them.

It wasn't much, but his eyes were certainly wet and his throat was tight. He took a deep breath, raising one hand to his mouth.

It just sucked. All of it. Even the fact that Elise had kissed him. Even the fact that he knew he was still in love with her, had only ever forgotten that he was. It sucked because he had wasted and waited all this time and nothing had even changed except everyone was older and still hurting.

Piper had grown up never knowing her dad and he knew she felt guilty for thinking of James as a father while Raigan, who'd lost her husband after only two years of marriage, still wore her wedding ring eleven years later. James could at least rest easy knowing he'd done right by them, even if he could never, never fix what had happened.

But Elise - no matter what he did now, he would never be able to make up for leaving her in the middle of coping with an impossibly sad situation. He hadn't even written a single letter.

James leaned forward, elbows on his knees and face in his hands. His mind was blank. He didn't have any more words for the situation. He felt empty and weighted down at once.

He heard the sound of footsteps come up behind him and James knew who it was before the person attached to them spoke, because he knew Raigan's gait better than his own. James lifted his head, but didn't sit up. He let out the breath he'd been holding in and stared fixedly on a patch of dirt and pebbles between his feet.

She sat down by him and leaned back, crossing her legs. "I saw you arrive, but you didn't come in," she said.

"Sorry," said James, hoping she wouldn't hear in his voice that he'd been crying.

"No, it's alright," she said. She kept quiet for a minute and he watched her foot swinging. She wore blue tennis shoes and the laces bounced up and down. "You were with her?" she said finally. She formed it like a question, but he knew she knew already. If not with Elise, he would've been here, but the whole weekend had passed without a word from him. She must have known instantly.

He nodded. His eyes were stinging again, so he stood up and paced around in front of the playground just in case. He didn't want her to see him cry. It was humiliating.

Raigan didn't say anything else. She didn't ask questions or even offer to listen if he wanted to talk. She just sat on the park bench, and - he noticed when he took one quick glance at her - kept her eyes tactfully focused on the street instead of on him.

James stopped pacing and crossed one arm across his middle and lifted the other hand to cover his mouth and nose. He blinked hard a few times to clear up the tears without having to wipe them away. He was pretty sure she knew already, but it still felt good to pretend she possibly hadn't noticed.

"Want me to tell Pipe something came up last minute?" she asked. "She probably thinks she's too grown up anyway."

James turned to face her for the first time. She was still looking out towards the street, her hands interlaced around her knee.

It was tempting to say yes.

"It's okay. I don't want to let her down," said James. He sniffed once. "No one's too grown up for ice cream."

"Okay," said Raigan. She looked at him for a second and then she put her hands down on the bench to push herself to standing and she wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight hug. Raigan gave the best hugs. James hugged her back and felt just a little bit of his stress slip away.

"You sure?" Raigan asked, pulling back. "She's a big girl, she'll understand."

"She's not that big," said James. "I'm fine. Thanks, Rai." He managed to smile. A small one, but a real one. He looped his arm over her shoulders and she put hers around his waist and they walked back together. James was infinitely grateful he had a friend like Raigan who knew better than anyone how to just be there for someone and know it was enough.

---

Diagon Alley was usually quiet on Sunday nights. Many of the shops were closed early to allow the workers time with their families. It was eight o'clock, the perfect kind of dusk, when James and Piper took their seats across from each other at one of the ornate white garden tables outside Florean Fortescue's Ice cream Parlor. About two years after the war ended, it had been reopened by the original owner's niece who had a real knack for inventing flavors. Every week she had a new featured flavor and Piper nearly always tried it (the only exceptions James could remember were Lemon-Raspberry-Dragon-Dung, for obvious reasons, and Black Currant Walnut, because Piper had always hated walnuts). Today she sat down with a cone of Peach-Almond Sorbet, licked it once, and nodded her approval. "Good," she said.

"Good," said James, who rarely ventured away from his old standard strawberry cone.

"I started your homework today," said Piper after a minute.

"Good girl," said James. "Don't put it off."

"How come you assign so much?" she asked. It was hot out, the air sticky and static. Piper's ice cream dripped over the edge of the cone and onto her hand. She grabbed a napkin from the stack James had put in the middle of the table and licked the side of the cone where it was melting the most to try to rescue it.

"It's not that much," said James, frowning.

"More than any other teacher gave us," she said.

"Softies," said James.

"But it's summer," said Piper dramatically. "We're supposed to be off school, not just doing it elsewhere. When I went to muggle school I didn't have summer homework."

"That's because you were in primary school," he said. "And anyway, you did. You had to keep a reading log."

"Yeah except Mum had to fake the whole thing because she couldn't write down that I was reading like... 'The Wizard and the Hopping Pot.' Had to be muggle books."

James laughed. "Well, regardless, Hogwarts always has summer homework. You'll survive it. Just take it outside or something."

"Is second year better or is it harder?" she asked. Her ice cream was melting faster than she could keep up with it and she gave it a look of deepest disappointment.

James frowned. "Both," he said. "Every year gets a little harder. But they get better too. You've got friends now. Peeves will leave you alone slightly more, because he prefers to mess with first years. You know you're way around... well I guess you already knew your way around, but you're a special case."

"Yeah, I guess," she said. "I don't know if I do have friends though."

"What do you mean? What about Elliot Finnegan? And you were just over at Kathleen's house this week."

"Well yeah," she said, turning a little pink. "But Elliot's in Ravenclaw and Kathleen's a Hufflepuff. I mean in my house. I don't have any Gryffindor friends."

"What about Lilianna McSorley? You talk to her."

"She's best friends with Shannon Wilkinson."

James smiled a little.

"It's not funny! They all think I'm weird because I know you and Mum and I've been at Hogwarts forever." She took a bite out of her cone. Melty ice cream spilled over the edge of the eaten part and slipped through one of the holes in the table and onto her knee. Piper scoffed at it, rolling her eyes. She had grown up a lot in the last year, but James was glad she was still a little awkward, a little gangly, and not embarrassed to be seen in public with him. He was dreading the day she became too aware of the fact that he was her professor to associate with him outside the house.

"Well that's petty of them," said James, trying to contain his amusement. Piper's reactions were pure gold. "Don't worry about it, Pipe. You're mum and I didn't really become friends until our second year. I don't know who wouldn't want to be your friend anyway."

Piper looked skeptical, but she didn't push it.

"You got a plan for your birthday yet?" asked James. He stuck the bottom of his cone in his mouth and pulled out his wand to clean up his sticky hands. Piper held her hands out as well and he tapped each palm with the tip of his wand.

"All my grandparents are coming over. And Mum invited your parents too, but she hasn't gotten their owl yet. That's all I know."

"Can't believe you're almost twelve already. Thought I told you to stop having birthdays-"

"When I was eight, I know," she said, glaring at him. "I don't want to be eight. Being eight sucks."

"How old d'you wanna be then?" asked James.

"Fifteen," said Piper. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs and her arms.

"Hm," said James. "O.W.L. year?"

"Good point. Okay, sixteen, then."

"Well," said James, "don't blink. It'll be here in a second."

Piper looked him dead in the eye and blinked very obviously. "Still eleven," she said, straight-faced. "Good try, though."

James laughed and pretty soon Piper was smiling too, impressed at her own wit. He was glad he had come.