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James woke to daylight that seemed far too bright. His skull throbbed with every beat of his heart and his stomach rolled queasily in time.
Madam Pomfrey loomed over him, wand in hand, her expression pinched.
“Well,” she said briskly, “that took long enough. You’ve been out nearly two days.”
James tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The world lurched violently to the left, his vision swimming. He flopped back onto the pillow with a groan.
“You’ll stay down, thank you very much,” Pomfrey snapped, pressing a hand to his shoulder. “You’ve taken a Bludger to the head. Nasty hit, Potter. There may be some lingering damage. How do you feel?”
“Like the Bludger came back for another go,” James croaked. His throat was raw, his words scratchy.
“Headache? Dizziness? Nausea?”
“Yes, yes, and yes.”
She made a faint tsk and jotted something in her notes with her wand. “And what’s the last thing you remember before waking here?”
James frowned, the effort of thinking making his temples pound. Quidditch—there had been a Quidditch game. There must have been; she’d said he’d taken a Bludger to the head. He reached for the game, for the pitch and the crowd and the sting of wind on his face before the hit—and found nothing. Just blank space where the memory should have been. He tried again, further back. Tried to remember what he’d been doing before the game, who the game had been against. Nothing. He remembered summer: playing Quidditch with Sirius in the garden at his parents’ house. He remembered Diagon Alley, buying books and supplies. He remembered the train, the chatter in the compartment, the laughter. After that—nothing. A grey fog swallowed everything whole. Panic swelled in his chest, cold and heavy, as he realised he couldn’t remember arriving at school. His thoughts stuttered, tripping over themselves. Term began on the first of September. Quidditch season never started till October. That meant—Merlin—that meant he was missing at least a month.
“What’s today’s date?” James asked, his voice unsteady.
Pomfrey’s eyebrows knitted together in concern. “That’s usually my question, Mr Potter.”
“Please.” The word came out thin, desperate as James tried to fight the rising dread clawing at his throat. “Just tell me.”
Her frown deepened, lines creasing sharply across her forehead. She hesitated, as though weighing something, then said. “Fifth of February.”
For a moment James could only stare, his mind refusing to shape the meaning of her words. Then it broke open all at once—he hadn’t just lost a match, a few weeks, a month. He’d lost six months. He’d lost the entire first term. Lost Christmas. September to February—gone, erased.
“No,” James said, shaking his head. His chest tightened until he could hardly breathe. “No, that’s not—that can’t—”
“Mr Potter, I need you to concentrate,” Pomfrey’s voice steady, clinical. “Do you know your name?”
“James. James Fleamont Potter.” The words came automatically, tumbling out. His own voice sounded distant, muffled, as though it belonged to someone else.
“And the name of the school you attend?”
“Hogwarts.”
The word stuck in his throat. Hogwarts—but he didn’t remember it. Didn’t remember walking through the gates, sitting down in class, flying over the pitch. Nothing. Just summer, the train—and then this.
“Mr Potter—James—look at me.”
He tried. His vision blurred, tears pricking hot at the corners of his eyes. “I don’t remember,” he choked. “I don’t remember any of it. It’s gone.”
Panic surged, thick and unstoppable, filling every breath. He felt as though he were tumbling backwards through blank space, nothing to catch him, nothing to hold onto.
“I don’t remember,” James repeated, his breath coming sharp and ragged. “It’s gone.”
“Enough,” Pomfrey said firmly. She pressed a vial into his hand and tipped it toward his lips when he fumbled. “Small sips. There we go. That’s it.”
The liquid was cool, bitter on his tongue, but it slid down easily. Within moments the worst of the panic ebbed, the frantic pounding of his heart slowing until it was merely unsteady rather than unbearable.
“Better,” Pomfrey murmured, though her eyes were still flinty with concern. “Now hold still.”
What followed was a blur of wandlight and muttered incantations. She prodded at his temples, his throat, the base of his skull; traced intricate sigils in the air that glowed and sank into his skin; shone lights of varying colours into his eyes, each one making his vision swim differently. At one point he thought she even drew smoke from his ears, watched it coil, frown, and vanish with a sharp flick. By the end of it James felt prodded, dazzled, and slightly ill. Pomfrey, however, seemed satisfied—or at least no longer grim.
“Well,” she said at last, lowering her wand, “you’ve sustained a rather nasty fractura cerebri obscura. In plain English: a splintering of the memory pathways caused by blunt magical force. Not uncommon with Bludger strikes of this magnitude.”
James blinked at her. “So my brain’s cracked?”
“Splintered,” she corrected. “But not permanently. Your memories are still there, locked behind the damage. In time they should return of their own accord—though I warn you it may be fragmentary at first. Dreams, flashes, disorientation. Until then: rest, no Quidditch, no duelling, and absolutely no foolishness.”
James let his head drop back against the pillow. Memories locked away somewhere inside him, sealed behind a crack in his mind. It didn’t feel like a promise—it felt like a sentence.
He drifted for the rest of the morning, slipping between waking and sleeping. Then, around lunchtime, the doors to the hospital wing banged open hard enough to rattle the bedframes.
“I told you he’s awake, she said he’s awake, so why in Merlin’s name are we still waiting—” Sirius’s voice carried before he did, striding into the ward like a storm through a window. Behind him, Remus and Peter trailed with rather more caution, exchanging resigned looks.
Madam Pomfrey shot to her feet. “I told you, Mr Black—no visitors. He needs rest and quiet—”
“Quiet?” Sirius repeated, outraged. “My best mate’s had his head caved in and you want me to tiptoe? James, mate—” He was at the bedside in a moment, crouching so his grey eyes were level with James’s. His expression was grave. “You do remember me, don’t you?”
James blinked and Sirius’s face swam a little out of focus. “Yes,” and then, he added with a wince, “you’re loud.”
Sirius barked a laugh. “Memory of me intact. Brilliant,” he gestured towards Remus and Peter, “what about them, do you know who they are?”
“Pads,” Remus said quietly, laying a hand on Sirius’s shoulder. “Don’t—”
“Yeah—” managed James.
“Well that’s a bloody relief,” Sirius said with a grin. “Don’t worry about a thing, Prongs, we’ll fill you in on everything. Every bloody minute, every Hogsmeade weekend, every detention—hell, I’ll even retell Binns’ lectures if you’re desperate.”
Peter nodded, “yeah me and Remus have already put together all our notes from last term, between us we should be able to cover it all.”
“And–” added Sirius, “don’t worry about quidditch, I can run practice until you’re back on your feet.”
“Enough,” Pomfrey snapped. “Mr Potter needs rest.”
“Rest, sure, but also justice.” Sirius straightened, jaw tightening. “Don’t worry, James. Rosier won’t know what hit him.”
James blinked at him. “Rosier?” he echoed faintly as Madam Pomfrey tried to manhandle Surius in the direction of the infirmary door.
Sirius ducked beneath her arm, “Yes, Rosier, slimy bugger—”
“Out!” Pomfrey said sharply, making a second grab at Sirius and succeeding in catching a fistfull of his robes. “Out, all of you. You can come back tomorrow,” she said as she herded all three boys out of hospital wing.
“Don’t worry James,” called Sirius over his shoulder, “I’ll avenge you—smarmy git will regret ever picking up a bat—”
The door slammed shut cutting off the rest of Sirius’s words.
James spent the rest of the day in and out of sleep. A handful of teammates dropped by, which was how he learnt it had been a Bludger from Slytherin’s new captain, Evan Rosier, that had landed James in the hospital wing. James tried, and failed to picture Rosier—all he got was a sort of fuzzy image of a blonde bloke who had made the team the year before and hung around with Sirius’s younger brother Regulus Black.
On the second day Lily came to visit, which under ordinary circumstances would have thrilled him, but for some reason he couldn’t quite seem to muster the energy to flirt with her.
On the third day, the culprit himself walked into the hospital wing. James, who had been dozing, blinked awake to find a tall, broad-shouldered blonde boy with startlingly blue eyes standing at the foot of his bed. It took James several seconds to place him as Evan Rosier. For one thing, he was definitely taller than the guy James vaguely remembered from last year’s Quidditch final. For another, was a lot better looking than James remembered. It was sort of distracting actually.
“How are you feeling?” Rosier asked. His voice was low, even, his gaze steady on James.
“Like I was hit in the head by a Bludger,” James returned.
Rosier’s jaw tightened. He looked away, swallowed, and when he looked back his expression was rawer than James expected.
“I’m so sorry, James. I wasn’t aiming for you—I was after Prewett, and you flew straight into the ball. You know I’d never try to hurt you, yeah?”
There was something almost desperate in the way he said it. James, wrong-footed by the sincerity—and by hearing his first name from someone he was fairly sure he’d never actually spoken to—blinked at him.
“Er,” he managed, suddenly awkward under the intensity of Rosier’s stare, “it’s alright. I mean, Quidditch, isn’t it? Shit happens. And Pomfrey reckons my memory’ll come back. It’s just a splinter—head's not actually broken or anything. So, don’t worry about it, mate…”
James trailed off. Rosier was looking at him as though he’d just started speaking Gobbledegook.
“Your memories?” he asked slowly. “What’s wrong with your memories?”
James shifted. “Well, they’re sort of… gone.”
The colour drained from Rosier’s face completely, he looked a bit like he might be sick.
“What do you mean gone?”
“Not everything,” James said. “Just the last six months. Since term started, basically. Everything before that’s fine.”
“You can’t remember anything at all?” Rosier asked.
“Really, it’s not as bad as it sounds,” James said, feeling the odd need to comfort the guy, despite it being his fault that James’s memories were gone in the first place. “It’s temporary. Pomfrey says they’ll come back.”
“Right,” Rosier said, voice tight. He looked away, then back again, expression suddenly rather pained. “I should go.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, eyes fixed on the floor. “You er, you should get some rest.”
And then he was gone, leaving James staring after him—confused, and with a faint, inexplicable sense that something important had slipped through his fingers.
Pomfrey kept him in the infirmary for a fourth night, insisting he stay put until she was satisfied the fracture in his head wasn’t worsening. James submitted, mostly because standing for too long made the floor tilt alarmingly. Sirius did his best to keep him entertained, sweeping in the moment classes ended like a one-man news sheet, perching on the edge of the bed and launching into a relentless commentary. James learned, in dizzying succession, that Sirius and Mary Macdonald had got together and broken up three separate times since term started before finally calling it quits the month before, (“don’t roll your eyes, Prongs, it’s complicated”), that Marlene McKinnon was now seeing Fabian Prewett (“bloody menace, the pair of them”), and that Peter had asked Emma Vanity out six times, only to be turned down six times (“not that I’m counting,”) said Sirius cheerfully announcing the tally.
Remus and Peter did their best to catch James up on all the topics they’d covered over the term throughout their classes, but despite their best efforts, the three of them only made James’s head spin more. He found himself forgetting halfway through Sirius’s stories what had supposedly just happened, or who had broken up with whom, and by the fifth day when he finally emerged from the infirmary, he felt more muddled than when he’d known nothing at all.
Anyone else in James’s position might have been panicking about NEWTs—six months of lessons gone, just like that. James, however, was only mildly concerned. Vaguely. It was hard to work up much dread when the thought kept being elbowed aside by something else:
Quidditch.
Sirius had told him, with no shortage of dramatic flair, that they’d had some of their best matches in years. A victory against Ravenclaw that had been talked about for weeks. A nail-biter against Hufflepuff that had the whole school on its feet. “You were brilliant, Prongs—best Chaser in decades, no joke.” James listened, smiled, but the words slid off him like water. He couldn’t remember. Six months of flying, of celebrating wins he’d supposedly led—and all of it gone.
That loss stung sharper than missed coursework or forgotten lectures ever could.
And beneath it all, something else lingered. A hollow he couldn’t quite name. He told himself it was natural—the ache of lost time, lost chances, missed memories. But it didn’t feel like that. It was sharper, more specific: like the ache of missing someone. It felt like the absence of a person. Someone who should have been there and wasn’t. Except everyone was there—Sirius, Remus, Peter, his family. No one missing, no one gone. Which only made the feeling more jarring, more disjointed, like his own heart knew something his mind couldn’t grasp. Like the ache you carried when you longed to wrap your arms around a friend you hadn’t seen in months. The pull of a smile you remembered, or a laugh that wouldn’t leave your head.
On the sixth day James returns to classes, and is greeted with an enthusiasm that borders on overwhelming—cheers from the Quidditch team, backslaps from his fellow seventh-years, and a general clamour that made his already tender head ring. It seemed word of his memory problem had spread across half the school while he’d been confined to the infirmary. James blamed Sirius—who couldn’t keep his mouth shut if you tied it with Spellotape—and found the whole thing deeply embarrassing. Still, it spared him the awkwardness of explaining it himself. People were only too happy to fill in the blanks for him, often without prompting, and often with more detail than James particularly wanted.
The whole affair drew more attention than he’d expected, even from other Houses. Professor Flitwick took him aside and offered extra Charms tutoring to make up for missed lessons. A group of Hufflepuff fourth-year girls, blushing furiously, squeaked out their best wishes for his recovery at dinner and pressed a card and packet of Chocolate Frogs into his hands before bolting back to their table.
A pair of Ravenclaws from the year below cornered him in the library. The boy was tall, dark-haired, his expression grave; the girl beside him was striking, all long blonde hair and startling blue eyes. Both of them looked worried.
“Is it true?” the boy asked, low and serious. “That you’ve lost your memories?”
"Er yeah," said James.
The pair exchanged a meaningful look. And then before James could ask who they were, or why they cared, the girl leaned in, her voice soft and oddly sincere.
“I hope they come back soon James.”
And then, just as suddenly, they were gone—heads bent together, whispering furiously as they slipped away between the shelves, leaving James frowning after them with the uneasy sense that he’d just missed something important.
But by far the oddest encounter came on James’s third night out of the infirmary, when Sirius’s brother stopped him in the corridor after dinner.
Regulus Black was not in the habit of speaking to James— he had made no secret of his disdain for Sirius’s friends, James in particular, from the moment he’d arrived at Hogwarts. Over the years James had been dragged into more than a few skirmishes between the brothers, and he had always been left with the firm conviction that Regulus Black hated his guts. So when Regulus appeared out of the shadows of a dimly lit corridor, grey eyes stormy, and asked—quietly, intensely—how James was feeling, it knocked the breath clean out of him. There was no sneer, no barb, no casual malice. Just a look that suggested he might actually care.
And so it continued through the second week of February. James woke on the fourteenth with an odd sense of foreboding—the sort of needling weight that usually meant he’d forgotten something important. Which, considering he’d quite literally misplaced the last six months of his life, was patently ridiculous. There was no way his brain could single out this particular date for special treatment. And yet the feeling clung, prickling at him as he trailed Sirius and Peter down to breakfast.
Valentine’s Day had, as usual, transformed the Great Hall into a battlefield of bad ideas: bewitched chocolates dive-bombing from the rafters, heart-shaped confetti drifting down like ash from a doomed romance, and a flock of aggressively pink doves circling overhead, shedding both feathers and droppings with abandon.
But all of that paled next to the spectacle at the Slytherin table.
A gigantic rose bush had erupted from the centre of the Slytherin table, so enormous it cast half the house into shade. Its target was obvious: Evan Rosier, who was rapidly disappearing beneath a storm of bright orange petals. His lap, his hair and his breakfast vanished in a sea of orange while the Slytherin table erupted in cheers and wolf whistles at his expense. And then—as if sensing its efforts weren’t being properly appreciated—the bush doubled down. Branches shuddered, and an avalanche of petals poured down, burying Rosier in orange until he staggered to his feet, scowling furiously as the Great Hall dissolved into laughter. A fresh barrage followed, flowers launching like tiny torpedoes, pelting him from every direction. Rosier attempted to bat the flowers away—and then seemed to give up entirely. Ducking his head, arms raised for cover, he bolted for the doors to the dungeons, chased all the way out by a relentless shower of blazing orange roses.
The laughter was deafening, it was objectively very funny, and yet the whole thing only made James feel even more morose. Valentine’s Day used to be James Potter’s favourite sort of battlefield. He’d charge in armed with flowers, chocolates, and increasingly ridiculous grand gestures, all in the noble quest of making Lily Evans roll her eyes. But this year? Nothing. No plans, no schemes, no elaborate serenades under her window. At least not that he could remember anyway. He caught Lily’s eye across the table, and she beamed at him, all green eyes and perfect hair. Normally, that smile would’ve sent his heart into somersaults. Today, though, his heart just… sat there. Not a single flutter. James blinked, mildly horrified. He hadn’t thought about her once since she’d stopped by the hospital wing. And that was unprecedented. Lily Evans had been practically a full-time tenant in his brain since he was thirteen. Now? Vacant lot.
James’s bad mood persisted all day, hovering above him like a particularly persistent storm cloud. That had one thought on its mind, at some point in the last six months he seemed to have done the impossible: gotten over his crush on Lily Evans. Which felt less like triumph and more like loss. Like waking up and realising you were missing an arm, and not even knowing when it fell off. It clung to him in lessons, at lunch, even while he was meant to be charming the suits of armour in the corridor to insult passers by.
James felt restless. Irritable. Distracted. And sad. Unable to shake the feeling of absence clawing at his chest.
That night he dreamt of heat pressed up against him, all urgency and no patience. A mouth crashing onto his own, hot and insistent. Tongue against tongue, teeth catching his lip—pain, then pleasure rushing after it. Fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer, and he went, gladly, greedily, hands roaming, clinging, desperate for it not to end. He woke with a groan, hips grinding against the mattress, cock hard and aching. The dream clung in flashes—taste, touch, breathless want. He buried his face in the pillow, trying to chase it back, hand already slipping into his boxers. A few strokes later he came with a sharp gasp, the aftershocks leaving him dazed and panting. For a moment he lay there, basking in the afterglow. Then the emptiness returned. That hollow ache, sharper now, threaded through his chest. Absence.
After that night, the dreams became a fixture. Always the same, always faceless—heat and hands, a mouth that left him desperate, want pressed against him until he woke aching, hard, gasping. He never saw who it was. Never a face, never a voice. But instinctively James knew the person he was dreaming of wasn’t Lily Evans. Someone else. Someone that should be there and wasn’t. And each time he woke, the emptiness hollowed him out a little further. It was driving him mad. Wanting someone who didn’t exist. Longing for a presence he couldn’t name.
Madam Pomfrey sat James down at the end of his third week out of the hospital wing and told him, in no uncertain terms, that under no circumstances was he allowed back on a broomstick until his mind had healed. The conversation left him feeling even more put out than the one where he’d first been told he’d lost his memories. After all, what was the point of being at Hogwarts if he couldn’t play Quidditch? He then had to endure a painful conversation with the rest of the team, breaking the news that he would be holding tryouts for a temporary Chaser to replace him. It was, quite frankly, the worst week of James’s life.
The first round of tryouts went horribly—so horribly, in fact, that James briefly considered taking Sirius up on his offer of revenge on Evan Rosier. But the thought dissolved the next morning at breakfast. Rosier sat slumped at the Slytherin table, staring at his porridge like it had just informed him his cat had died. A blonde girl had her arm around him, her head tipped on his shoulder, and he looked thoroughly miserable.
James frowned into his own toast. Whatever Sirius had planned, Rosier didn’t deserve it. Not when he already looked like he was going through hell on his own. James sighed, turned his attention back to the issue of Quidditch. Or more importantly the lack thereof Quiddich in his life. Because without Quiddich James had far too much spare time to sit and ruminate on all the things he couldn’t remember—especially that gnawing sense he was missing someone crucially important.
That night he sat in the Gryffindor common room, slouched by the fire with his Potions text open on his lap, half-heartedly flipping pages in search of inspiration for an essay already scandalously overdue. He fought back a yawn, wondering for the third time if he could get away with copying from Remus, when something slipped loose from the book and fluttered to the floor.
Frowning, he bent to pick it up. A folded piece of parchment. He opened it and saw two lines of writing. Not his. He knew at once—it wasn’t his messy scrawl. The writing was neat, slanting cursive, the kind James could never manage.
Greenhouses. 7:30 tonight?
James stared, the words burning on the page. Not his handwriting. But tucked in his Potions book—meant for him, surely. His heart gave a funny little flutter. Someone had sent this to him. But who? He stared at the note, something about the slanting writing pulling at his mind, and then, unbidden a rush of memories, he was standing in the furthest greenhouse from the castle, a pink and purple sky just visible through the arched glass roof, waiting. Waiting for someone, and then arms slide around his waist from behind, a voice whispered low in his ear. “Miss me?”
James shot to his feet, Potions book and essay sliding forgotten to the floor. The common room barely registered as he dashed for the dormitory, taking the stairs two at a time. He tore through his trunk, pulling books free, shaking them out, scattering parchment and quills in his haste. His breath came quick, hands trembling with an urgency he didn’t fully understand—just the need to know if there was more.
He stopped mid-search as a square of parchment fell from between the pages of his History of Magic textbook. He pounced on it eagerly, unfolding it. The same slanted cursive. This one read—
7th floor, 9:30.
James redoubled his efforts, emptying the entire contents of his trunk onto the dormitory floor. It was a surreal exercise—sifting through belongings that felt as though he’d only bought them last month, yet bore the undeniable signs of use. His parchment roll, which his brain insisted should be fresh, was half-spent. His Quidditch gloves were worn in places that spoke of long hours on the pitch. And there were stranger things, too: an eagle-feather quill he didn’t remember buying, a slim French dictionary, a pair of grey cashmere socks, a handful of Zonko’s purchases, a card with a drawing of an orange rose on the front, the inside left blank, and a box of Firewhisky dark-chocolate cauldrons that stumped him completely, given he hated dark chocolate and firewhisky.
And amongst it all—notes. Notes tucked in books, in pockets, all in the same slanted cursive. At least thirty of them, each pointing to a different location:
Astronomy Tower, midnight?
Spare Charms classroom, fourth floor, after dinner.
Quidditch pitch after practice.
James picked up the French dictionary. Flipping through the pages, he stopped. Several words and phrases had been highlighted, his own handwriting crammed into the margins, and there, tucked into the final page was another note in the same slanted hand. But this one was different. No time, no place. It simply read:
You looked fit at lunch today.
Heat rose in his chest. A wild mixture of emotions crashed over him. You looked fit at lunch today. Arms sliding around his middle in a greenhouse at twilight, lips against his in his dreams each night. The constant feeling that someone was missing. Because, James realised, someone was missing.
Someone important.
And yet, who?
The question rose hard and fast because surely Sirius would have mentioned if James had been seeing someone—or even someone he was sneaking off to snog in the greenhouses. Wouldn’t he? Unless Sirius didn’t know. But why wouldn’t James have told him? He told Sirius everything. The thought gnawed at him as he sat staring at the collection spread across his bed.
That night, James dreamt he was standing in a greenhouse beneath a towering rose tree. Its branches stretched impossibly high, blossoms crowding the glass ceiling, their petals glowing faintly in the dim light. A voice—low, intimate—whispered in his ear.
Miss me?
He spun around, but there was no one there. Only a scatter of orange petals drifted down, catching the last threads of evening sunlight as they fell around him and sadness swept over James. The whole thing was disjointed, blurred at the edges—half dream, half memory. And when James blinked awake in his dormitory, breath catching, he felt no closer to understanding. When he finally slipped back into sleep, it was to a different scene: standing on the Quidditch pitch beneath a pale sky, the trees of the Forbidden Forest just beginning to turn gold as Evan Rosier, of all people—shouted at him, something about practice slots.
Through the days that followed, James distracted himself from the misery of finding his own replacement on the team by visiting every place mentioned in the notes, hoping something would spark. He went to the greenhouses, their glass panes fogged with heat and the smell of earth. The memory of standing there, arms wrapping around him haunting him. The ghost of lips brushing against his neck, a voice in his ear. Miss me? Yes, thinks James. Yes, I do miss you. But try as he might he could not push the memory further, could not see who the arms belonged to. He checked the broom cupboard on the second floor, even stepped inside among the mops and buckets, standing still as if the cramped walls might whisper something back. He went to the unused Charms classroom on the fourth floor, wandered the long blank corridor on the seventh, hoping the empty stretch of wall might stir a memory. He walked the Quidditch pitch, craned his neck at the goal hoops, traced the shadows beneath the stands. He climbed the Astronomy Tower, stair after stair until the cold night air struck his face. He went to every spot listed, every disused classroom, every forgotten hallway. Every location mentioned in the notes.
Nothing.
When he had run out of places, he started over. It became a ritual, part of his day. He told himself he was trying to remember, but if he was honest, it was more than that. Some small, stubborn part of him hoped that if he kept returning, one day he would push open a door and someone would be waiting.
No one ever was.
What came instead were more dreams. Dreams of those same places, now tangled with the other images, or perhaps memories: a hot mouth against his, fingers tugging his hair. Sensation and setting collided in dizzy fragments—his body pressed against stone walls, laughter echoing off empty desks, whispered words in the dark of the Tower. He woke each night gasping, desperate, reaching for someone who was not there. Afterwards he would lie awake, staring at the canopy of his bed, the same thought looping endlessly: where was this person? His person. Why hadn’t they come to him? The whole school knew by now, knew he’d lost his memories—surely they did, whoever they were, they must know too. Didn’t they care? Didn’t they want him anymore? Was that why they hadn’t appeared, hadn’t explained who they were?
And when that thought tied him in knots, a worse one always followed. What if they hadn’t come because they didn’t exist? What if his fractured mind had conjured someone—a phantom hand, a phantom mouth. What if the dreams were only dreams? What if the notes weren’t what he thought they were?” What if they meant something else entirely? The thought hollowed him out more than anything. Because if it were true, then James wasn’t just missing someone. He was mourning a person who had never existed at all.
A full month after waking in the hospital wing James still hadn’t managed to remember anything beyond the confusing fragments that came in dreams—and worryingly, still hadn’t found a new Chaser. With their next match only two weeks off, it was disastrous. At the beginning of the fourth week he was summoned to McGonagall’s office.
“Mr Potter, do have a seat,” came the brisk greeting. James sat, and was immediately offered a biscuit—never a good sign. He accepted it with foreboding. McGonagall regarded him over her spectacles for several long seconds before saying, “It has been brought to my attention that Gryffindor is lacking a Chaser.”
James nodded unhappily and took a bite of his biscuit.
“Under normal circumstances I would hurry you to pick a replacement.” She paused, eyeing him. “However, given your evident trouble procuring a suitable candidate, the fact that we are more than halfway through the season, and that you, as captain, are unable to train a new Chaser—being, as Madam Pomfrey has informed me rather strictly I may add, that you are not to so much as touch a broomstick until your memories return—we find ourselves in a rather unprecedented position.”
James, unsure where this was going, nodded again.
McGonagall continued, “there is another option… if you were to agree not to find a replacement then the other house teams could forfeit a Chaser in any forthcoming matches against Gryffindor.”
James blinked at her, quite certain he’d misheard. “What?”
“Well,” McGonagall said crisply, “they would simply play a Chaser down until you are able to rejoin your team. This will of course only apply to matches against Gryffindor. For all others, each team will play as normal.”
James gaped. “You’re serious?”
She gave him a faintly amused look. “Quite, Mr Potter—unorthodox as it may be.”
“Well, er—yeah.” James hesitated. “I’d rather adjust our strategy to play with two Chasers than try and train up a new player this late in the season,” he added silently, especially since none of the people who tried out could even get the Quaffle through the bloody hoop.
McGonagall inclined her head. “Well, that is settled. You may go, Mr Potter.”
James stood, then curiosity got the better of him. He paused at the door.
“Professor? How exactly are you planning to convince the other houses to agree to play a Chaser down?”
McGonagall leaned back in her chair, a slight frown crossing her face. “As it happens I don't need to. Mr Rosier came to see me this morning with a petition signed by the members of each team. It would seem that, in a rather surprising display of sportsmanship, your fellow captains came together in support of your recent accident. And came up with the idea quite on their own.”
James gaped at her—and later, at dinner, found his gaze drifting curiously toward the Slytherin table, to Evan Rosier. Why would he agree to play a Chaser down? Why would any of them? Neither Miranda Pritchard, the Ravenclaw captain, nor Digory, who led Hufflepuff, were exactly friends of his. He couldn’t imagine either of them willingly handicapping their side for his sake.
And Slytherin? James wasn’t sure what the team was like under Rosier’s leadership—he couldn’t remember the last six months—but he doubted centuries of rivalry between their houses had evaporated overnight. He certainly couldn’t picture this sort of compromise under their previous captain, Emmeline Vance. He and Vance had spent the better part of last year at each other’s throats, hexes flying in the corridors more often than not.
Which made the whole thing… odd. Very odd indeed.
It niggled at James, like a scratch he couldn’t quite reach—one that, for some reason, grew sharper the more he tried to ignore it. By the end of the week it had worked under his skin completely, until it boiled over on Friday evening. He was meant to be in the library working through the backlog of Transfiguration notes Remus had given him. What he was actually doing was staring three tables over. At a girl with a Ravenclaw tie, her nose buried in a book. Beside her, Evan Rosier was slumped forward, head pillowed on his arm, fast asleep.
There was something familiar about the girl. Petite, strikingly pretty, with honey-blonde hair that caught the light, full lips, and cheekbones sharp enough to leave an impression. Familiar, yes—but he couldn’t place her. Then she looked up. Startling blue eyes met his, vivid and unblinking, and recognition snapped into place. She was one of the two Ravenclaws who had cornered him after the accident, pressing questions about his memory. She smiled—bright, easy—and that was enough to pull James’s attention away from Remus’s painstakingly neat stack of notes. He pushed back his chair and crossed the room.
“Hi,” he said when he reached her table.
“Hello, James,” the girl replied, still smiling.
“I take it we’ve met,” James said, giving her a sheepish grin and tapping the side of his head. “Apologies—memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“Yes, of course. Pandora Rosier,” she said. The smile faltered, replaced by something closer to concern.
James cleared his throat and asked—hopefully, almost pleadingly, “I’m so sorry to ask, but, er—how do we know each other?”
Pandora gestured towards Rosier’s slumped figure. “I’m Evan’s sister.”
“Right,” James said. Now that she mentioned it, the resemblance was obvious—alarmingly so. He was about to ask how her being Rosier’s sister explained why they personally knew each other when Rosier stirred with a muffled groan and pushed himself upright. His hair stuck up wildly on one side, and his expression had the dazed bewilderment of someone unsure what day, month—or possibly year—it was. He glanced from his sister to James, opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again without a word.
Pandora rose suddenly, snapping her book shut. “Would you look at the time—I was meant to meet Barty ten minutes ago. See you at dinner, Ev.” She offered James another bright smile. “Lovely seeing you, James.” Then, with a swift turn on her heel, she hurried out of the library.
James stared after her, rather taken aback by her abrupt exit. Rosier cleared his throat, drawing James’s attention back to him. He was watching with an almost cautious expression—the sort you might give a hippogriff you weren’t entirely sure was friendly. His shirt was rumpled, his green-and-silver tie hanging askew. James had the sudden, inexplicable urge to reach out and straighten it.
“How’s your head?” Rosier asked, hesitant.
James shrugged. “Alright,” he said, trying for light-hearted despite the odd tension that seemed to be radiating off Rosier. “Considering some bloke with a Beater’s bat tried to take me out.”
Rosier winced. “I really am sorry about—”
“It’s fine, mate,” James cut in quickly. Something about the way Rosier was looking at him made him feel uncomfortable; the vast library seemed to shrink, heat pressing close. “Look,” James went on, “McGonagall said you, Pritchard, and Digory all agreed to play a Chaser down. I just—er—wanted to say thanks.”
Rosier looked away, then back again, his expression unreadable. He shrugged. “Seemed fair.”
“Right,” said James. “Well—er—thanks, anyway.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Silence stretched between them. Rosier’s gaze didn’t waver, too direct, too intent. His eyes were the same piercing blue as his sister’s—too blue, like someone had gone and charmed them to match a summer sky. James swallowed, suddenly nervous beneath the weight of them.
“Right,” he said again, fumbling. “Well—I’ll see you around, then.”
“Yeah,” Rosier replied.
James turned on his heel and all but fled the library, desperate to be anywhere but under those eyes. It wasn’t until he was halfway back to the common room that he realised, with a groan, he’d left Remus’s notes behind.
February drew to a close and March crept in, cold and grey. James’s memories came in drips and drabs: confusing flashes of a chess game with Peter, a Quidditch practice in the rain. And always the dreams. Night after night, the same haunting scenes. Hands hot against his skin. A mouth at his throat. Strong fingers threading through his own. He woke each time with the same hollow ache, the sharp sense of missing someone.
And then came James’s birthday— the twenty seventh of March began with Sirius belly-flopping onto his bed like a homicidal walrus.
“HAAAAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOOOOU—” Sirius howled, spectacularly out of tune, shaking the whole mattress.
James groaned, wrestled a handful of Sirius’s hair in retaliation, and managed to jam his glasses onto his nose. The blur resolved into focus: a precarious mountain of brightly wrapped packages piled at the end of his bed.
“Excellent,” Sirius announced, already pawing through them like a starving man at a buffet. “Knew you’d get a good haul this year—nothing like a brain injury for public sympathy. ”
James swatted at him, half-hearted. “They’re my presents.”
“Semantics,” Sirius said, tearing into the nearest package. “Right, let’s see what we’ve got—”
Lily, of course, had gone for something painfully practical—a book on Arithmancy, the sort of thing James definitely needed but would never in a million years have bought for himself. Mary’s present was the exact opposite: a violently glittering Gryffindor scarf that immediately began shedding red-and-gold sparkles over everything it touched. James sneezed twice before Sirius howled with laughter and declared it an upgrade to the dorm décor.
Marlene had sent a box labelled “DO NOT OPEN INDOORS.” Knowing her particular sense of humour—and her unhealthy fondness for Dungbombs—James decided to take the warning seriously and left it firmly sealed. Frank, as dependable as ever, had gone the Quidditch route: a brand-new pair of dragon-hide gloves, already broken in for the perfect grip. The Prewett twins, naturally, had chosen chaos. Their contribution was a set of socks that exploded into showers of confetti whenever James put them on the wrong feet.
Peter’s parcel was carefully wrapped, though the folds of the paper were slightly crooked. Inside was a tin of his mum’s homemade fudge, soft and sweet and clearly packed with care. Remus, neat and thoughtful, had given James a smart leather-bound notebook with his initials embossed on the cover, charmed so the ink inside would only ever be legible to him.
And then there was Sirius. A t-shirt emblazoned with “PROPERTY OF SIRIUS BLACK” in bold letters across the chest. Sirius looked unbearably pleased with himself. James threatened to hex it, Sirius only grinned wider, insisting he wear it to breakfast.
There were other packages too, from people James barely knew—most of them girls. A jumbo box of Chocolate Frogs. An assortment of Honeydukes sweets in crinkled paper bags. A tie so offensively patterned James half wondered if it was a joke. Nestled in a velvet case, a very fine quill set that looked far too elegant for his scrawl. A vial of aggressively scented cologne in a glass bottle shaped like a broomstick. A knitted hat with CAPTAIN stitched across the brim in scarlet thread.
And then—almost overlooked—an envelope.
Sirius, of course, got to it first. He had just worked a thumb beneath the flap when James glanced up, catching the neat, slanted cursive on the front. James Potter. His heart gave a violent somersault.
He snatched it out of Sirius’s hand before he could protest, pulse racing. Because James knew that handwriting. Knew it far too well. He had spent the past month and a half staring at it whenever he couldn’t sleep, when he woke from dreams that left him half-lonely, half-yearning. He knew it from the notes folded and hidden beneath his pillow:
Greenhouses. 7:30 tonight?
Seventh floor, 9:30.
Astronomy Tower, midnight?
Spare Charms classroom, after dinner.
Quidditch pitch after practice.
You looked fit at lunch today.
The room fell away as he turned the envelope over in his hands, nerves and excitement tangling in his chest. Carefully, almost reverently, he opened it. Inside was a simple card: a black-and-white print of the Falmouth Falcons logo. On the inside, a single line in that same, unmistakable hand:
If you can’t play, you might as well watch.
Tucked beneath were two season tickets to the Falcons.
James just stared, heart hammering, the words on the card blurring until they were almost illegible. He didn’t even notice Sirius leaning over until the envelope was plucked neatly from his hands.
“Bloody hell,” Sirius said, holding the tickets. “These things are at least five hundred Galleons a pop.” He flipped the card over, frowned. “It’s not even signed.”
He handed the card back to James, lips quirking. “Apparently you’ve got one hell of a secret admirer. Shame they didn’t get your team right. Still—first match of the season, we’re going.”
James forced a grin, nodding along, but his insides were churning. Because Sirius was right—and he also wasn’t. James was a Cannons supporter, loud and proud, same as Sirius. Everyone knew that. Except that he wasn’t just a Cannons supporter. He’d never told Sirius, sworn Falcon-hater, never admitted, that he had a soft spot for the Falcons. That Falcon legend Karl Broadmoor was the reason James had wanted to be a Chaser in the first place, that he’d had a Falcons poster on his bedroom wall since he was eight, that he still watched every match like it was war. He’d never told Sirius, but clearly he’d told someone. A gift too perfect. From someone who knew him better than they ought to, someone he couldn’t remember.
“Seriously, Prongs,” Sirius said, “who the hell sent you these?”
James swallowed. His mouth was dry. “I… don’t know.”
Which wasn’t a lie. Not exactly—he didn’t know. Not really. All he had was a space, an empty space in his chest where someone should be. Someone who kissed him every night in his dreams, someone who was important, but for some reason wasn’t there. The tickets haunted him all the way through March and into the start of April. And by the second week of April, James had another problem to add to his already infinite list.
Evan Rosier.
Or more specifically: the fact that Rosier seemed to have set up permanent residence in James’s head. He kept noticing him—far too often, far too easily. An odd fascination that left him feeling equal parts embarrassed and… well, something else, whenever their eyes met across the Great Hall, or in the narrow crush of the corridor between classes. Every time it happened James’s ears went hot, and he found himself seized by the urgent need to turn on his heel and flee in the opposite direction. Which led, inevitably, to another thought—wild, impossible, utterly ridiculous, and yet stubbornly lodged in his mind.
Because it couldn’t be Rosier. Could it? The notes. The dreams. That hollow, missing space in his chest.
Surely not.
That would be bonkers. Rosier was a bloke—which actually gave James a lot less pause than the fact that he was a Slytherin. A Slytherin with very, very blue eyes. Nice eyes. A nice face too, actually. He was—well—a good-looking bloke. Stupidly good-looking, if James was being brutally honest. High cheekbones, straight nose, full lips, tall, broad-shouldered—and then there was the hair. Messy, but in that deliberate neat sort of way that James could never achieve, the roll-out-of-bed-and-somehow-still-look-like-you’ve-been-styled-by-angels variety of messy. Casual nonchalance, it was sort of. Hot. Unfairly hot.
Which was confusing. Because James kept getting tangled in questions like: how do you know if someone is just objectively attractive, versus you actually being attracted to them? Or—how do you know if the obscenely attractive bloke you keep accidentally making eye contact with is checking you out or just weirded out by the fact you keep staring at him?
And, most importantly, is it possible that all of this is nothing more than lingering brain damage brought on by the owner of those very blue eyes smashing you over the head with a Bludger?
And to make the whole situation decidedly more complicated, James couldn’t tell anyone. Couldn’t even ask for advice. Because if Sirius ever found out that James might—might—be harbouring a crush on a Slytherin, and not just any Slytherin but the captain of the Slytherin team and his estranged brother’s best mate, Sirius would skin him alive and hang his remains up in the common room as a warning..
The weeks that followed were… not James’s finest.
Every day seemed to bring some new, humiliating proof that he was, in fact, losing his mind. Or at least all ability to function like a normal human being in the vicinity of Evan Rosier. The top three worst instances being as followed, when James had bumped into him on the way to quidditch practice, which these days meant standing on the pitch, both feet firmly on the ground, hollowing up instructions to the rest of the team, Rosier had been all windswept, hair tousled and still in his own flying gear, looking for all the part like advert for some sort of expensive…. Something…and then he’d smiled at James and James’s brain had immediately evacuated the premises.
The second time, in the corridor after Charms, was worse. Because there was an audience. Rosier had nodded at him—just nodded, nothing special—and James, instead of returning the nod like a sane person had walked straight into Peter, knocking them down in a crashing cacophony of yelps that echoed through the hallway along with Sirius’s laughter.
The third, a few days after Gryffindor’s win over Hufflepuff, the first match they played without James in the air. Rosier passed the Gryffindor table on his way out of the hall, slowed just enough to glance James’s way, and said with a smile, “Good match.”
James promptly choked on his cereal.
It took Remus thumping him hard between the shoulder blades to stop him from expiring on the spot. By the time James wheezed himself back to life, Rosier was already gone, and Sirius was demanding to know what exactly was wrong with him.
That settled it. James decided the best course of action was avoidance. Total avoidance. No eye contact, no opportunities to humiliate himself further. At least not until he figured out what to do about Rosier—or, at the very least, until he learned how to exist in his presence without coughing up a lung or otherwise combusting. And so whenever he saw Rosier coming he simply turned around and walked the other way.
It was cowardly, and James knew that. But what else was he supposed to do? March up to the bloke and say, “Hey, weird question, but I think I might be having incredibly non-platonic dreams about you, and I can’t tell if they’re memories or just my brain taking the piss. Care to clarify?”
The very thought was mortifying. Because what if he’d gotten it wrong? What if the notes weren’t from Rosier at all, and James had just tied himself in knots over nothing? And perhaps even more terrifyingly—what if they were from Rosier? Then what? What did that mean? What were they to each other—and why… why hadn’t Rosier said anything? Why hadn’t he come to James first?
The situation was baffling, embarrassing, maddening. And through it all, nothing changed—the emptiness was still there. The absence. The dreams. Dreams that all too often now included golden hair and impossibly blue eyes.
On the first of May James walked into the Quidditch changing rooms and froze. There, on the massive blackboard, was the mock-up of a play. A variant of the Hawkshead Attacking Formation, only reworked for two Chasers instead of three. It was… well, it was brilliant. Painfully clever. But that wasn’t what sent James’s heart lurching into his throat.
It was the handwriting. The neat, slanted cursive scribbled beneath the diagram, even in chalk, was unmistakable. Irrefutably recognisable. The same hand that had been haunting James’s thoughts for months, staring up at him from secret notes and folded scraps tucked beneath his pillow.
Someone cleared their throat and James whipped around—and then nearly forgot how to breathe.
Rosier was leaning against the doorframe to the showers, hair damp, a towel slung low around his hips, water still clinging in droplets across a bare chest, muscles cut sharp beneath the light. Broad shoulders. Defined arms. A very visible six-pack. James knew he was staring—blatantly staring—but his brain had apparently given up on functioning altogether.
“Pretty sure that counts as cheating,” Rosier said. “Spying on my game plans. Not very Gryffindore of you.”
It took James several beats too long to register the words, and another few seconds to drag his eyes away from Rosier’s very nearly naked form. When he finally managed it, his gaze snapped back to the blackboard—and his stomach dropped straight through the floor. He’d forgotten. The handwriting.
“Those are yours?” James managed, his voice catching on the words.
Rosier ducked his head, droplets sliding from his hair to his shoulders. When he looked back up, he was smiling—small, hesitant, like a question mark.
“Yeah. What do you think?”
James cleared his throat, dragging his gaze back to the blackboard with monumental effort, determined not to get caught staring at all the golden skin and abs currently on display.
“They’re—er—good,” he managed. Miraculously. Somehow. Because inside his skull, everything was coming apart at the seams.
Relief punched through him so sharp it left him dizzy. Relief, and panic, and about a hundred other things he couldn’t name all crashing together at once. His ears rang. His heart was hammering. Every nerve ending in his body seemed to be shouting at once.
It was Rosier.
The notes.
The birthday card.
The dreams.
James had been right, it had been him, him all along—James didn’t know whether to laugh or throw up or bury his face in his hands and never come out again. He wanted to demand why Rosier hadn’t said anything sooner, to ask if the dreams were memories, to ask what any of it meant. He wanted to step forward, grab him by the towel, and—
“James?”
James forced himself to meet Rosier’s gaze—and was swallowed by those impossibly blue eyes, eyes that looked just as uncertain as he felt.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” James blurted, the words ripping out before he could stop them, all the confusion and ache of missing someone he couldn’t remember boiling over. “Why didn’t you say anything—?”
Rosier’s mouth opened like he was about to answer, but then his head snapped towards the door as voices carried down the corridor. He looked back quickly, his expression tight. The door swung open. Sirius, Marlene, and Mary tumbled in, the Prewetts visible just behind them. For a beat the entire room froze—everyone looking from James, to Rosier, and back again.
Then Sirius’s face darkened. He strode forward, jabbing a finger hard into Rosier’s bare chest.
“Oi! You stay the hell away from him, you memory-thieving, bat-swinging maniac!”
There was a beat of silence. Rosier’s jaw flexed, and he looked like he was weighing up whether or not to hit Sirius. Then, slowly, he exhaled, shoulders loosening as his eyes flicked to James for the briefest second before settling back on Sirius.
“Relax Black,” he said evenly. “I was just leaving."
And with that, he snagged his robes, slung them over his shoulder, and was gone—leaving James choking on about twelve different emotions at once, and Sirius bristling like a dog that had just chased off a venomous snake.
The rest of practice blurred. James, for once, was glad he was grounded; he couldn’t have kept a broom steady if his life depended on it. His mind wasn’t anywhere near the pitch. It was still in the changing room, pinned fast to the image of Evan Rosier: the chalk handwriting, the water on his skin, the flicker of uncertainty in those impossibly blue eyes. By the time practice wound down, James couldn’t recall a single direction he’d given. He’d been running entirely on autopilot.
As they trudged back up to the castle after showering, Sirius gave him a sideways look. “You alright, mate?”
James forced a nod. “Yeah. Just—er—tired, I think.”
Sirius accepted that with a grunt, then brightened suddenly. “Hey, listen—I’ve been thinking. It’s been ages since we pulled a prank.”
“Yeah,” said James absently, not really listening. “Sounds good.”
“Brilliant. So, I found this hex that gives you boils on your private bits, and far as I see it, Rosier’s got it coming—”
“No,” James cut in, sharper than he meant. Sirius frowned, and James cleared his throat quickly. “Look—it was an accident, Sirius.”
“Who gives a shit if it was an accident? He still got you stuck on the ground and your head all scrambled.”
An image of golden skin and a towel slung far too low flickered across James’s mind. He swallowed. “I don’t want you to hex him.”
Sirius looked properly crestfallen. “What about his hair then? If the boils are too much, at least let me turn his hair ginger.”
“Absolutely not,” said James firmly. “No hexing him, or his hair—that’s not going to undo anything.”
“Might make me feel better about playing them without you,” Sirius muttered darkly. Then he narrowed his eyes. “When’d you get all high and mighty about Rosier, anyway?”
“I don’t know—I just—” James broke off, fumbling for words. “He came to see me in the hospital after it happened. Apologised. Said he hadn’t even been aiming for me.”
Sirius’s frown didn’t soften.
“And since then—he’s been… decent. Pretty sure it was Rosier who got other teams to play a Chaser down. So just—don’t hex him, alright?”
Sirius’s scowl lingered, his jaw tight. Then he huffed, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Fine. No hexing. But if I can get a swing in at him during the match then I’m taking it.”
James didn’t say anything, though a flicker of relief threaded through him—the thought of anything happening to Rosier’s hair was oddly, disproportionately distressing. And he especially didn’t want Sirius’s wand anywhere near anything that had been under that towel. Which was, of course, when his treacherous brain decided to conjure an image. The trail of golden hair dusting Rosier’s stomach, smooth skin, that sharp cut of muscle running lower, lower—James’s ears burned. His pulse thudded in places it had absolutely no business thudding. He stared very hard at the flagstones, terrified that if he so much as glanced at Sirius, his best mate would instantly read the sordid direction of his thoughts.
James tried—he really did—not to stare across the hall at dinner but it was a losing battle. His gaze kept snagging on the Slytherin table, on Rosier. He realised just how badly he was failing when their eyes met—not once, but four separate times over the meal. Each glance sent a hot jolt through his spine, dangerous and electric.
That night, when he finally slept, the dreams came. He was stretched out on the Quidditch pitch, the evening sky bleeding from pink into a deep bruised blue. His heart thudded against his ribs, fingers twined with warm, steady ones. A low voice whispered something in French, the words flowing over his skin like silk.
James woke before dawn, the dormitory still hushed. He dragged on his clothes, heart still racing from the dream. He dug through his trunk in the dark dorm until he found the small French dictionary. The one he couldn’t remember buying. He flipped through it in the dim light, skimming the words he’d highlighted, the notes scrawled in the margins and as he did his heart sank.
Forty minutes later James was outside the entrance to the Slytherin dungeons. He waited for the better part of half an hour, ignoring the curious looks from passing students. Waited until Regulus Black appeared, sharp as ever despite the early hour. James flagged him down immediately.
“Hey,” he said, low and urgent. “Can you get him to come out?”
Regulus didn’t ask who. He just gave James a small, knowing smile and disappeared through the entrance.
Ten minutes later, Regulus re-emerged with a bleary-eyed Rosier in tow. His hair was mussed, his shirt half-misbuttoned, his expression somewhere between tired and wary.
“Can we talk?” James asked, voice tight. He jerked his head away from the slow stream of Slytherins drifting toward breakfast.
Rosier hesitated, then nodded, trailing after James down the corridor and into an empty classroom.
“Did you say no?” James demanded the moment the door clicked shut. “Is that why you didn’t say anything? Is that why I’ve been feeling so bloody shit for the last three months?”
Rosier blinked at him, adorably confused in his half-awake state. “Did I say no to what” he asked, voice rough with sleep and confusion.
James scrubbed a hand through his hair, frustration boiling over. “Look—I can’t remember, alright? It’s all a mess. I don’t understand half of what I’m feeling, except that I’ve been missing someone for months. Missing you, without knowing it was you. At first I thought I was going mad—dreaming about someone that didn’t exist. And then I found the notes, and you sent me those Quidditch tickets, and I realised it was real. And then that it was you. But none of it made sense, because why wouldn’t you just say something? So what happened—did we break up? Did I mess it up? Why didn’t you say anything that day in the hospital, or after?”
Rosier opened his mouth, shut it again. For a moment he just looked lost. Then his eyes met James’s.
“No,” he said quietly. “We didn’t. I mean—we weren’t really… not properly. Not yet...” He trailed off, swallowed and started again. “That day, when I came to see you—you looked at me and there was nothing. I could see it in your face. And I panicked.”
His gaze dropped, then rose again, meeting James’s like it hurt to hold it. “Then Valentine’s—you attacked me with bloody flowers like you did before we started hooking up. And I thought maybe you’d remembered. But when I tried to talk to you after—every time I got near, you bolted. And then you started avoiding me like the plague. I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know if you’d remembered and were furious, or if you hadn’t, or if…” He trailed off again, expression raw.
“Flowers?” James echoed, frowning. He hadn’t done anything with flowers—especially not on Valentine’s. That had been only days after he’d woken up in the hospital wing. He remembered it clearly: sitting in the Great Hall, the chaos of the day unfolding around him, the sudden, almost hollow realisation that he was over Lily. That when he looked at her, he felt nothing.
He remembered confusion. A strange sense of loss.
And then—oh, shit.
The memory slammed into him: a gigantic rose bush bursting from the middle of the Slytherin table, pelting Rosier with showers of orange roses as he fled the great hall.
“Fuck,” James muttered, closing his eyes as the wave of understanding crashed over him. Because he didn’t even need to remember the details—he knew himself well enough to know exactly what he’d done. A spectacle, over-the-top, designed to embarrass just enough to be funny but carrying a meaning underneath. Because there always was, with him.
An orange rose bush.
A card with an orange rose on the front at the bottom of his trunk.
Orange roses.
The transfiguration for that rose bush alone would’ve taken days to layer, charms carefully stacked so it would explode from the table at just the right moment. That wasn't something you threw together. It had to be planned. The kind of plan that took time. Like learning how to string together a sentence, a question, in French, because of course it wasn’t just roses, no—that was just spectacle before the real bit. The bit that mattered. But he’d forgotten to do that. Forgotten that he wanted to. Except… some part of him must have known, because hadn’t he woken up with the nagging sense that there was something vital he’d forgotten? Something that had been waiting for him to act on?
“Fuck,” James said again, slower this time. “Stupid memory loss ruined everything.”
There was a pause, the air taut between them. Then Rosier tilted his head slightly, the faintest smirk tugging at his mouth.
“Did you say you’ve been dreaming about me?” he asked, voice low. James’s stomach swooped and his pulse jumped at the way Rosier was looking at him. It was unfair. It was dangerous. And Merlin help him, James wanted to kiss him.
“Yeah,” James said, stepping forward. Then another step, until the space between them was barely anything at all. “Try just about every night for the last three months.”
Rosier—no, Evan, James corrected fiercely, because of course he’d be Evan—broke into a grin. Dimples cut deep, sharp and unexpected, flashing like the sun breaking through a cloud.
“That’s hot,” he said simply.
James kissed him.
And it was like everything suddenly fell into place. All the tension, the confusion, the months of restless dreams and aching emptiness—ignited. Evan’s mouth was warm and certain against his, a low sound rumbling in his throat as he caught James by the tie and tugged him closer. This—this—was what James had been missing, what his bones, his heart, his very soul had been aching for without knowing why.
James broke away, breathless, his forehead pressed to Evan’s. “Something I meant to ask,” he managed.
Evan groaned low in his chest, chasing the kiss with a tilt of his head. “Can’t it wait?"
James laughed, a little giddy, a little wild. “No, it can’t. It’s about three months overdue, actually. Meant to do it on Valentine’s—but someone”—he gave Evan a pointed look—“hit me in the head with a Bludger and I forgot.”
Evan winced, but James ignored his apologetic expression and pressed on, nerves fizzing as he drew in a sharp breath. “So here goes. Sorry if my pronunciation’s rubbish.”
James swallowed, then said, carefully, “Veux-tu être mon petit ami?”
For a beat, there was only silence—Evan blinking at him, blue eyes wide, lips parted like he couldn’t quite process what James had just said.
And then he snorted. “Your accent is terrible.”
James rolled his eyes, heat flooding his cheeks. “Well, you got the point, didn’t you?”
Evan grinned. A shit eating grin. Dimples and all. “Yeah,” he said, voice low. “I got it.”
He tugged James back in, their mouths meeting again, fiercer this time, threaded with relief and want and the sharp, dizzying joy of something finally found. Then, he said against James’s lips, “And yes. I’ll be your boyfriend.”
And that was that.
James couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day. Everything felt lighter—like the cloud of uncertainty and confusion that had been dogging him since the accident had suddenly lifted, letting the sun come blazing through. And with it, the memories began to return, trickling back as if all they’d been waiting for was James to fill the Evan-Rosier-shaped hole in his life.
At first, it was little things. Recognising a passage in his Transfiguration textbook. Remembering the precise sound Peter made right before he’d been sick after seventeen sugar quills on Halloween. Sirius’s most recent breakup with Mary. And then James walking in on Sirius and Remus snogging in the dormitory afterwards, Sirius’s shirt halfway off, Remus going pink right up to his ears as James backed straight out of the room, muttering apologies and promises to knock in the future.
Then the memories came back in waves, crashing into him: classes, pranks, arguments that burned hot and fizzled just as fast. The endless laughter, the detentions that had felt worth it, the late-night flights when they were meant to be asleep. The steady rhythm of life at Hogwarts, the tapestry of it, each thread sliding back into place.
And threaded through all of it, now impossibly clear, was Evan Rosier.
Walking onto the Quidditch pitch in September on the third day of term, broom tucked under his arm, only to spot Evan Rosier running laps around the grass—sweaty, shirtless—and how his stomach had done a full-on backflip at the sight. The inexplicable itch he’d felt after, an incessant need to do something about Rosier—so he had. Stopping him in corridors to make pointless comments about his hair (which James secretly thought was perfect), needling him about Slytherin’s tactics, tossing out whatever nonsense came to mind just to force an exchange. How Rosier had ignored him. Completely blanked him, lips tightening but refusing to bite. Which had only made James double down, louder, cheekier and more insistent.
James’s many attempts at petty sabotage—deliberately booking the Quidditch pitch at the same times Rosier used it, just to force a confrontation. And the day it had finally worked: Rosier storming across the grass in mid-October, broom clutched tight, blue eyes blazing as he tore into James.
“Self-absorbed, insufferable prick,” Rosier had called him, voice sharp enough to sting.
And James—God help him—had stood there, grinning like an idiot, realising halfway through the tirade that he was probably the most turned on he’d ever been in his life. He’d been done for after that. Completely lost. From then on James had thrown himself into the pursuit of Evan Rosier with the same stubborn, single-minded energy he’d once directed at Lily Evans.
It started, as every great love should, with flowers.
Roses, of course.
Roses for Rosier.
James arranged for roses to find their way to Evan every day—delivered to the Slytherin dormitory by elf, dropped onto the breakfast table by owl, tucked neatly into his Quidditch locker. By the end of the third week, Evan cornered him, demanding to know why James kept sending them, James had grinned and told him that he'd done it because he wanted to.
The next day James staged the grand finale of his offensive: a copy of The Secret Language of Flowers sent to Evan at breakfast, the entry on orange roses carefully dog-eared.
Orange roses speak in the language of fire—Desire. Passion. Beginnings. They are neither the gentle friendship of yellow nor the deep devotion of red, but the spark that lies between—the fire of fascination, the quickening of something new, the promise that what starts in flame may yet endure. To give one is to confess: I burn for you.
The difference, it turned out, between James’s ill fated campaign to win over Lily Evans and his much more successful one to win over Evan Rosier, was simple. What had made Lily groan and roll her eyes, made Evan catch him by the sleeve outside Charms, hauled him into a fourth-floor broom cupboard—and kiss him so hard James forgot to breathe. James made a helpless noise, half-surprise, half-groan, and then he kissed Evan back like his life depended on it—greedy, clumsy, desperate for more. His glasses skewed, a mop handle dug sharply into his back, dust pricked at his nose—and still, it was the best kiss he’d ever had.
Through November, December and January, James had become intimately acquainted with every broom cupboard, empty classroom, greenhouse, secret passage, and half-forgotten corner the castle had to offer—the sort of places you could disappear into when all you really wanted to do was snog.
And between the snogging, he got to know Evan Rosier.
Evan was quiet, but funny—the kind of dry, cutting humour that slipped past James’s guard and left him laughing harder than he cared to admit. And for all that he wore Slytherin colours—through and through—he was, against all odds, honest and surprisingly brave. He never walked away from a fight, and though he had a sly streak (and absolutely no shame in using whatever advantage he had to win an argument—and yes, James could admit Evan’s abs had been weaponised more than once against him, leaving him hopelessly distracted mid-row), Evan never hexed when someone’s back was turned, never went low when he could go level, and—Merlin help him—more often than not, he fought fair.
James didn’t stand a chance. He fell, and he fell fast—headlong, graceless, unstoppable, the way he did everything else in life. By mid-January, he’d already started plotting how to take Evan from someone he snuck off to snog in secret, into someone he could openly snog—wherever, and whenever he wanted.
The Valentine’s Day plan had been born.
And then, of course, at the beginning of February James had had the misfortune of being whacked in the head by a Bludger courtesy of the very object of his affections, and had subsequently forgotten all about his plans, his feelings, and Evan Rosier entirely.
Except he hadn’t. Not really. Because even when he didn’t know it was Evan Rosier he was missing, some stubborn, infuriating part of him had still known he was missing somone—and had kept prodding and pushing him back toward the place where he was always meant to be.
Which evidently was snogging Evan Rosier in a broom cupboard the night before Slytherin was due to play Gryffindor.
“Why do you always pick the cupboards that are full of spiders?” Evan asked as James walked him back through the darkened castle toward the Slytherin common room.
Evan, being annoyingly the more sensible of the two of them, had finally cut the snogging short on the grounds that it was one in the morning and they both had a Quidditch match in eight hours. And then when that had done little to discourage James, the more persistant reminder that it was James's first game back in the air in over three months and he really should get some sleep.
“Well," countered James, "I’d be happy to snog you outside of cupboards too. I just wasn’t sure if you’d be alright with that.”
Evan shot him a sideways look. “When you say outside of cupboards, do you mean unused classrooms in the middle of the night, or do you mean, you know, in the hallways—during the day. With people watching.”
“Both,” James admitted, clearing his throat. “But mainly that second one.” He glanced at Evan from the corner of his eye.
There was a pause—a long, taut one that made James feel like he was balancing on a broom a hundred feet up with no hands. And then Evan’s fingers slipped into his, strong and certain, giving his hand a small, decisive squeeze.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d be okay with that.”
A single squeeze of Evan Rosier’s hand, and James Potter was gone. Utterly, hopelessly, joyously gone. So gone that he didn’t even particularly mind when Slytherin beat Gryffindor the following day (well not that much, anyway).
And when the final whistle blew and they touched down on the pitch, James bypassed the customary Captain's shake of the hands in favour of grabbing Evan by the front of his Quidditch robes and kissing him. Right there, in the middle of the pitch, with the entire school watching.
It was perhaps a little more public than he’d originally intended. But then—Evan was flushed from the match, hair wild, sweat gleaming along the line of his jaw, and James was fairly sure no human being had ever looked that good on a broom. He sort of forgot about the crowd, about Sirius, about Gryffindor, about everything, really. Except Evan. For a heartbeat, the pitch was silent—then someone in the vicinity of the Ravenclaw portion of the stands yelled:
“ABOUT BLOODY TIME!"
And there was a burst of noise. Applause. Catcalls. And more than one wolf whistle.
Evan, for his part, went rather pink, but the corners of his mouth betrayed him, quirking up despite himself. His blue eyes were sharp and bright and—Merlin help James—fond. And when James leaned back in to steal another quick kiss, Evan didn’t stop him. Not even a little.
Later, in the Gryffindor common room Sirius paced the rug like a general freshly betrayed, throwing his arms around with wild indignation.
“Rosier?!” he barked, rounding on James. “Rosier?! Out of all the people in this castle, Prongs! Couldn’t you have gone for literally anyone else? A Hufflepuff, even! I would’ve taken a bloody Hufflepuff!!”
James shrugged and said without an ounce of apology, “what can I say? The heart wants what it wants.”
“Yeah I’m sure it was your heart you were thinking with,” Sirius muttered darkly, dragging a hand down his face. “I can’t believe you snogged him on the Quidditch pitch in front of the entire school. Do you know what this means?!”
“That you’re happy for me?” James offered hopefully.
“That I’m going to have to start talking to my brother,” Sirius groaned, collapsing into an armchair like the thought pained him physically. “I know you. You’re going to make us all hang out. It’s going to be horrible. Unbelievable. Out of all the boyfriends in all the world, you had to pick Rosier.”
And Sirius was right—that was exactly what happened. For the most part, it worked out surprisingly well. Remus got on swimmingly with Barty—Regulus’s boyfriend and the male counterpart of the concerned-looking Ravenclaw duo who’d cornered James in the library right after the accident. Peter developed what was clearly a hopeless crush on Evan’s sister, Pandora Rosier, though he denied it hotly whenever anyone so much as hinted. And as long as they managed to keep Sirius and Regulus from hexing each other’s eyebrows off at every group gathering, it was, more or less, fine.
More than fine, really.
Brilliant.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” said James on the last day of school, as they sat by the lake.
“What’s that?” Evan asked, his tone lazy, like the sun soaking into his skin.
“How did you get Digory and Pritchard to agree to play a Chaser down?”
Evan was quiet for several seconds too long. When he finally spoke, it was in an offhand voice—far too casual. “Just pointed out it wouldn’t be fair for you to have to train up another Chaser halfway through the season.”
“That’s it?” asked James curiously.
From the grass to his left, Barty—his head pillowed on Regulus’s lap—lowered his book and peered over the top. “No. That’s not it. He got me and Panda to blackmail Pritchard and then he suspended Digory upside-down from the—”
Regulus immediately clamped his hands over his ears. “Don’t tell me—I’m a prefect and morally obligated to report all three of you.”
“—Astronomy Tower until he agreed to make his team sign the petition” Barty continued cheerfully, ignoring his boyfriend’s protests all together.
Evan cleared his throat, staring hard at the lake. “Actually it was the West Tower—just below the Owlery.” He gave a little shrug. “And I wasn’t planning on it. Just wanted to talk. But then he was a proper dick about it and…I might’ve lost my temper a bit.”
And that was it. James knew, right then and there, that he was irrevocably in love with Evan Rosier—and that if it was up to him, he was going to do everything in his power to spend the rest of his life with him.
Later that evening, as they walked back through the castle after a long day by the lake, James cleared his throat. “So—the first Falcons match is next week. I happen to be in possession of two season tickets. Fancy going with me?”
Evan shot him a sideways look. “You know I actually got you those tickets for Christmas.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” Evan’s voice had an edge to it—hesitant, almost shy in a way James rarely saw. “I wanted a way of telling you that I wanted to keep seeing you. Spending time with you—after you left school. Do things like go to Quidditch matches, go on dates.” He gave a quick, self-deprecating huff. “But then I sort of… chickened out of giving them to you.”
James jabbed him lightly in the side. “You’re an idiot,” he said, shaking his head. “For that, and for not saying anything when I lost my memories.” He paused, shook his head. “I still can’t believe you let me walk around like that for almost three months. Do you have any idea how much of a mind-fuck it is to be in love with someone but not be able to remember who they are—”
A sudden metallic clang cut him off. James whipped around, startled—only to find the space beside him empty. His eyes dropped to the floor where Evan now lay sprawled in a heap of scattered armour, having apparently walked straight into one of the suits lining the corridor.
“Are you alright?” James asked, half-concerned, half-amused.
“Fine,” Evan said quickly, though his voice was a little dazed as he tried to untangle himself from the mess. “What did you just say?”
James frowned, offering him a hand up. “You’re an idiot?”
Evan took his hand and pulled himself up.
“After that,” he said, still gripping James’s hand tightly even once he was back on his feet.
James’s grin split wide, wicked. “Oh—the bit about being in love with you?”
“Yeah. That bit.”
“I’m in love with—"
—James didn't actually manage to finish the sentene before he was dragged into the nearest alcove, and snogged senseless. It was messy, breathless, all teeth and heat and laughter—and James thought, dazed and certain, that he’d do it all again, hell he’d sacrifice all his memories if he came out the other side with Evan Rosier beside him.