Chapter Text
“Uh, sorry, excuse me?”
The man paused suddenly, turning around. He seemed surprised to be stopped. “Yes?”
The sun was shining down, spring just beginning to give way to summer. He squinted in the light, shielding his face with his hand to look properly.
“Sorry, again. This is probably weird, but aren’t you that author? James Potter?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, warmly. “That’s me.”
“Okay, I- I read your book and it really resonated and I just… it was real. Like I don’t know, I don’t have those sorts of words, but it was nice to see that somebody did.”
He smiled, something wistful and a little sad crossing over his face. He pushed his glasses up his nose, and as he did, a wedding ring glinted on his finger. It shone brightly in the sun. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t always have them either. They come and they go.”
“What do you do when they go?”
He shrugged. “You force yourself to exist through it.”
“Sounds hard.”
“Oh, it is. The hardest thing you’ll ever do is learn to let yourself live.”