The Love Story of Harriet Potter and Tom Riddle

Chapter 112 - James's Journey

Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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That terrible sound reverberated in the air as James, Hugo, Rose, Harriet, Mark, and Tom all looked at each other in bewildered confusion.

The nauseating screech of metal twisting against metal combined with the hiss of breaking glass and squealing rubber sent Mark asking, ".......What was that?"

"It sounded like a car crash." Harriet frowned as she placed her fork down and stood from her seat.

The peace seemed to evaporate from that promising morning as an aura of grievous foreboding quickly filled the air, as if some terrible calamity loomed in the walls.

For reasons he did not understand, James rose with his mother.

"Where are you two going?" Tom asked as he narrowed his eyes, "Mother and Father will be down soon.....You can't-"

"-I just want to see what happened, Tom." Harriet snapped as she looked over at her husband with a worried frown, "If there's been a crash, someone may need help."

Rose, Hugo, and Mark all glanced at each other before the three of them left their seats to chase after James and Harriet as well.

Irritated that his family's perfect breakfast had been seemingly disrupted by the errors of muggles and their flawed ways of life, Tom gnashed his teeth as he too stood from his seat to leave the abandoned dining room.

"Harriet...." He called as he marched through the house, "Harriet, not so fast!.......Wait for me!"

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Harriet felt grateful she had used the good sense to tuck her wand into the pocket of her morning robes that day.

As she opened the front door to Riddle Manor, the first thing she saw at the bottom of the hill was the large, industrial muggle truck that had become horribly mangled at the bottom of the hill.

Harriet gasped as she quickened her pace, eager to rush and help whoever had been injured at the base of her family's property.

It was James immediately after, who came behind her, peered over her shoulder, and recognized the unbelievable reality of the scene.

Harriet didn't realize that the yellow car in front of the truck belonged to-

"LILY!" James shouted.

Her eyes widened as she turned and watched her eldest son's handsome face twist into a mask of pain and fear as he stumbled forward into an uncoordinated sprint, weighed down by his own shock.

"LILY!" James roared again, his voice raw and ragged.

He didn't even notice that Harriet rushed down the hill to chase him.

Some distance behind them, Hugo, Rose, Mark, and Tom all followed to flee towards the wreckage as well.

Several passersby had stopped and pulled their vehicles over to contact muggle emergency services once they noticed the severity of the collision.

James rushed in front of Harriet with incredible speed, carried by fear, consumed by woe.

The sirens that wailed in the distance only seemed to exacerbate the tragedy of the morning as James made it to that crushed, yellow car and banged on the cracked window.

"LILY!" He shouted wildly.

Before Harriet could reach him, James banged on the glass again, sending it shattering inside and out.

"James! Be careful!" Harriet called behind him, fearful her son could injure his lover further in his great panic.

Harriet had no reason to be afraid.

It would have been impossible for James to cause Lily any more harm.

As he leaned through the shattered window, ignoring the sharp bits of broken glass that scratched and punctured his own skin from face to waist, a gut-wrenching cry escaped from inside the car.

"James!" Harriet shouted.

Tom's dark eyes narrowed.

Rose gasped as Hugo and Mark staggered forward.

In a desperate attempt to reach his fiancé as quickly as possible, James snaked his arm over the broken glass and unlocked the driver's door, which he promptly wrenched open.

With his arms flailing frantically, he managed to untangle his beloved from the seat belt before he hauled her out of the car.

Harriet had been racing towards her son, but as he eased his fiancé's body onto the cold, unforgiving pavement, she stopped in her tracks as a hand clamped over her mouth.

Lily's lifeless body needed no examination for the truth to be determined.

Although the truck driver laid unconscious against the wheel of his own ruined vehicle, Lily's life had certainly come to a premature end.

James howled like a wounded animal as he stared into her ruined face.

"M-Mark, stay there, sweetheart!" Harriet commanded as she forced a wave of nausea back as she turned to look at her youngest son before she hurried towards James.

For the first time in his life, Mark blatantly disobeyed his dear mother.

While the others joined Harriet in her rush to get to James, Mark did the same, refusing to watch his brother suffer alone.

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The next hours passed by in a blur for James.

The muggle police force came.

Lily's parents arrived soon after.

As James watched people come and go, he heard her mother's wails and her father's bitter words of terse comfort, spoken through the man's withheld tears.

Come and go.......

The lights on the ambulance that took Lily's body away irritated him.

The whimpers from her parents echoed in his brain.

His heart pounded in his chest as he glanced around in a numbed state of rising tension, as if he had been murdered in his sleep and thrown mercilessly into some sort of hellish new-

"-Sweetheart?"

His mother's voice suddenly made the world stop spinning for a single second.

"Darling, I love you.....We all love you so much." Harriet smiled as tears of sympathy and grief welled in her eyes, "You're not alone, love.....You're not alone!"

Harriet raised her arms and opened them in a gesture that warned James of her intention, should he choose to push her away, but to her surprise, he gladly accepted his mother's hug.

"You're not alone, sweetheart." She whispered again as she kissed his cheek and gave him a tight squeeze.

With his head buried in Harriet's shoulder, while the rest of those present were distracted, James allowed himself the great luxury of letting his tears flow freely into the fabric of her robes.

As Harriet whispered words of motherly love and comfort to him, she assumed he trembled from sadness, but anger fueled his tremors, not only melancholy.

The fragmented edges of his broken heart oozed rage.

Although he had no proof, although he had no indication besides his own instinctive conviction, James was more than certain that Lily's death had somehow been orchestrated by the one he hated above all else.