A/N: Cousincest ahead.

..

let rome burn

..

we will run and scream

you will dance with me

we'll fulfill our dreams and we'll be free

not with haste/learn me right, mumford & sons

..

You are seven and he is too and he has just pushed a four-year-old Lily off her broom for being annoying.

(She was being annoying, really bloody obnoxious, in fact, but the grown-ups don't see it that way and James is sent to his room for the rest of the day as punishment.)

He sneaks out, of course, and you find him almost by accident when you are wandering by yourself through the field of heather past the edges of Godric's Hollow. It is evening and you see the fading light glinting off his dark hair from where he sits among the purple and green.

He is sulking, in one of his rare surly moods. You'd never admit it but you kind of like it when he is like this, quiet, lost in the world inside his head. He is usually all laughter and scheming and plans and ideas, all shouting and passion and temper and joy – so much, too much, too much life and energy in one young boy for the rest of the world to handle. But sometimes, maybe only when the sun sets over the moor just like this or maybe only when the beetles are crawling slowly along the plants as they are tonight, his mood is dark and his temper subdued. He is still bursting with energy, but it is turned inward into himself instead of outward, and when you look at him at times like this you feel a secret little thrill at the storms you see behind his eyes.

"Are you lost?" he asks you rudely, his eyebrows drawn as he glares up at you. He obviously wants to brood on his own, and now you've come and disturbed his peace.

James Potter is used to getting his way. But you are used to ignoring what other people want. You have always been a little selfish, and maybe it is the middle child in you, always desperate and greedy to take enough for yourself so that you won't be passed over or forgotten.

So you smile meanly at him and sit down in front of him just to spite him.

(And also because you can't help but be drawn to him when he is like this, sullen and closed-off and glorying in his loneliness.)

"You should be thanking me," you tell him smugly, crossing your arms. "I distracted Aunt Ginny so she wouldn't come up to your room to check on you and notice you weren't there."

He knows you've done him a huge favor and you know that he knows it, but his mood is black and his eyes are stormy so he sneers, "I don't want to thank you."

And if any of your other cousins ever dared to treat you like this you'd kick their shins in a second. If Fred insulted you or if Rose tried to boss you around or if Lucy tattled on you again or if Albus ruined your painting you'd be ferocious, unrelenting, and you wouldn't stand for it. But this is James and he's so cool and he's always been the most confident, most nonchalant, most daring one of them all. He flouts the rules and gets away with nearly everything and always has some new plan, some wild scheme, and all of you are secretly a little desperate for his approval.

Then again, you're Dominique, and you're far too proud to ever show weakness. So you turn your ski-slope nose up in the air at him. "I don't care," you reply casually, because the feeling of being alone with him here, when he's in trouble and no one knows where you are, is so illicit and thrilling and satisfying that you don't want to ruin it all by getting into a fight with him.

His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly then, and you smirk to yourself because you know you've gotten to him anyway. He's used to being in control, he's used to baiting people and laughing at their predictable outrage, but you are refusing to cooperate with his plan to drive you away.

"Go away, Dom," he orders.

You simply grin and ignore him, reaching out to pull up some heather and begin fashioning it into a crown for yourself.

He sighs impatiently and rakes his nails through the dirt roughly. You know you are getting to him, but you don't care, and you continue to pay him no attention as you braid the plants with great concentration.

Finally, he stops his display of dissatisfaction with you and goes still, watching you, mesmerized, as you work the heather into a perfect circle. When you are done, you hold the crown out to him for inspection, your blue eyes smug. You are terribly pleased with yourself, you have to admit.

His expression is still dark, but he takes the crown from your hands and runs a finger over it, admiring your handiwork, before reaching over to place it on your head. "You look stunning in purple," your mother always tells you, and you are satisfied with the way James' eyes widen a bit as he takes in the sight of you, the green and the purple and your golden hair, all hazy in the fading evening sunlight.

But then you break the stillness by reaching up to throw the crown off your head and laughing, laughing as you run away through the plants. He chases behind you and when he finally catches up to you, you both keep running, screaming with delight as you weave through the field. You are young and you are infinite and you are fearless and you are free.

..

You are eleven and you are fearless as you board the Hogwarts Express, smirking over your shoulder at Louis, who has been whining all morning about how much he wants to go to Hogwarts, too.

You and James and Fred find a compartment with some other first years, and the three of you intimidate all the rest of them with your self-assured attitudes, your inside jokes, your exhaustive knowledge about the castle and its traditions.

"My sister's a prefect," you brag to a timid-looking girl. "So I'll probably be able to get away with whatever I want."

"Yeah, right," James snorts, rolling his eyes at you. "Vic is basically a psychotic dictator," he tells the girl, "She doesn't even let us have candy when she baby-sits."

The girl breaks into a shy smile at his assertive tone, and you glare fiercely at her before whirling around, turning your back to James and playing Exploding Snap with Fred for the rest of the ride.

..

You are twelve and you nearly kill him when he lands you in detention, yet again.

"It was Fred's fault!" James protests, and you stick your tongue out at him behind Professor Longbottom's back.

"Yeah, right," you reply caustically, and you step on his feet in the corridors every chance you get for the next week. Scrubbing out disgusting old cauldrons is not how you had envisioned spending your Friday night.

But then afterward you return to the common room and he's there waiting for you with cake smuggled up from the kitchens and it's hard to stay angry with him when he's grinning at you, his eyes full of light and laughter and plans and stories. Because that much life and energy directed wholly at you is a force of nature against which even you are powerless.

..

You are fourteen and haughty when he bursts into his dormitory one day and finds you making out with Lucas Wood on his bed.

"Potter!" Wood exclaims, pushing you away from him like your skin is on fire and he's about to get burned. "I thought you were in Hogsmeade!"

Wood has leapt off his bed to stand far away from you, his posture tense, his expression fearful. Everyone knows that James Potter is colossally overprotective when it comes to his female relatives and any boys who might try to take advantage of them. Why, he'd even hexed a seventh year last week for Lucy, and he'd reduced to tears a boy who liked Roxanne.

But you remain seated on Wood's bed, sitting up straight, thoroughly unruffled.

"I came back early to go for a broom ride," James tells Wood tersely, but his eyes are on you, only on you. You see him take in your messy hair, your swollen lips, the lovebite on your neck and your rumpled clothing. You see a flash in his brown eyes then that's unlike anything you've ever seen, almost a mix between the light that is normally in his eyes and the storms in his eyes when he is brooding, and you have to fight to push down the strange feeling that springs up in you when you notice it.

You're Dominique, and you're proud and a little vain (you know how pretty the young woman you've grown into is) and you've learned how to be always composed, by this point, so you stand up regally, fix your sliding bra strap and head toward the door of the Gryffindor fourth year boys' dormitory. You stare coolly back at James as his gaze on you never wavers.

"I suppose I'll see the two of you at dinner later," you say before departing, and then you push past them and stroll calmly out until you reach the stairs, where you break into a run until you've flung yourself on your bed, face buried in your pillow, chest heaving and gasping for air.

..

You are sixteen and it is summer. The cousins are all staying over at the Burrow tonight, and you have all raced each other to the swimming hole in the woods, delighting in the way your raised voices echo off the trees and the way the night air feels on your exposed skin.

You don't get there first, of course, because you are Dominique and you are far too old to act like a child these days anyway, but when you do arrive with Rose and Lucy you stop for a moment, taking in the scene of all your relatives diving into the warm water, shouting with glee.

It strikes you suddenly how strange life is, how quickly time passes, how much everyone has grown up without you really noticing. Teddy and Victoire and Molly are gone, grown up and tossed into the real world to do whatever it is adults are meant to do, and Lucy will be a seventh year in the fall and then she'll vanish into reality just like them. Even Louis and Lily, the babies, are thirteen now.

And you are caught in between, in the horrible and beautiful sliver of time where just for a little while, just for a couple years that will really seem like moments, anything is possible.

"Come in the water!" Hugo calls, and you join the others in stripping down to your bathing suit and jumping in.

There are so many of you that it's impossible to keep track of where every cousin is at once, so no one really notices when you lie on your back and drift away from the others, breathing serenely as you stare up at the stars just visible through the treetops. When you look at the stars you don't see the constellations Professor Sinistra always tries to drill into your head in Astronomy, and you don't see possibilities or symbolism or great philosophical lessons like some people claim to. All you see are little white pinpricks of light, shining through a black canvas, and you stare at them for so long until the little white dots are embedded into your irises.

Suddenly, you hear a splash in the water near you and you turn your head lazily to see what it is – a frog, a fish, a falling branch?

But your breath catches in your throat when you see that it is James, his features barely visible in the darkness.

You stare at each other, and you don't know how long it goes on – a second? Five minutes? Forever? And then he's gliding toward you, and as he moves into the moonlight you can see his body moving sinuously through the black water. It's the closest you've ever come to understanding the "poetry" your Muggle Studies professor is always on about – the planes of his face, the gleam of his eyes, his broad shoulders, the muscles working in his arms, his damp chest, his tousled hair.

You cannot move, you cannot breathe, you cannot think.

He swims up to you and then he's there, right before your face. For a second he opens his mouth and it looks like he's about to say something, so you blink and turn your eyes attentively toward his. But then he closes his lips and shakes his head, and he pushes himself onto his back to lie next to you on top of the water.

Your bodies never touch but he is so close that if you reached out your fingers, you could feel his skin. You do not touch but somehow you can still feel him, every part of him in every part of you, your bodies so close that all of your nerves are aching to reach out and connect with his.

Neither of you speaks, and you have to look back up at the stars so you don't forget yourself again and rake your eyes over every inch of his body, gleaming in the moonlight. You stay like that, just drifting on your backs, and in a way it's peaceful, the calm lapping of the ripples of the water and the cool night air washing over you, but inside, your world is violent, chaos threatening to push past the walls you've built for yourself and explode out of you like a disaster in the making.

You lie there with him until Lily and Louis find you and drag you back to play a game with the rest. Even as you shout and laugh with your cousins, you feel James' eyes on you, and you are hyperaware of the way your neck curves into your shoulder, the way your breasts push against the thin fabric of your bikini top, the way the water beads on your lips and your hair is sleek against your head. You feel his eyes on you, and you get a strange thrill and you like it. You like it, and you know it's wrong, but you can't help but show off a little, stretching your arms languorously over your head, tossing your head back in laughter so that your hair glides down your back and your neck is long and lovely.

Later, you've all tramped back to the Burrow, dried off, and collapsed into beds. You lie in one of your uncle's old beds next to a sleeping Lucy, but your eyes don't close, your breathing doesn't slow, your heart doesn't stop its furious pounding. You lie awake all night, skin tingling, head full of thoughts that you know are wrong, and in the morning you lie to yourself and pretend they were nightmares, even though you never actually fell asleep.

..

You are still sixteen but you feel like you have aged centuries over the past few months. Every morning you wake up and you have to lie to yourself. You have to lie to yourself and everyone around you, and some days you think you might be successful, might actually be getting good at this. But then you pass by him in the halls or catch his eye across the common room or accidentally brush his arm during class and you know that you are nothing but a pretender.

The two of you barely speak anymore. Fred thinks you are in a fight and predictably takes James' side, even though he doesn't even know what the argument is about. (Because there never was any fight in the first place.) Rose is very friendly to you all of a sudden, thinking you've finally agreed with her and begun to disapprove of James' constant rule-breaking. It's a convenient excuse, so you don't bother to correct her and even begin to run with it. Maybe you'll start to actually try at your schoolwork. Maybe you'll even stay out of detention and start to actually give a fuck about the approval of your professors. You give it a try and you laugh to yourself when you see how easy it all is, to pretend to care about classes and rules and to seem like the perfect little model student. You're no Victoire, former Head Girl, of course, but your teachers are wowed by your reformed behavior and newfound work ethic.

But it's all a ruse, and you still don't give a shit about any of it. You begin to worry for yourself as you realize that you have begun to care about less and less. Everything seems pretty irrelevant these days.

"I don't care about anything," you whisper to yourself as you walk into the Potions classroom one day, testing out the words on your lips. If it's true, you might as well learn to accept it.

But then James runs into class ten minutes late, his hair disheveled, his eyes wild, and as he rattles off a slick excuse to the professor, you know you have just told yourself another lie. His brown eyes meet yours across the classroom and you forget to breathe as it hits you that he is the only thing you care about anymore.

..

You are scared. You never feel safe anymore, because where can you go to feel safe when the monsters are inside of you?

You don't bother to sleep these days, because when you are lying in your bed, awake in the dark, it's nearly impossible to distract yourself or stop yourself from thinking about the way he looks when he's flying through the air during a Quidditch match, the sound of his laugh, the way his hand had felt against yours when he'd had to pass you the pumpkin juice at breakfast that one morning. (You're completely screwed.)

So instead you slip out of the castle and wander the grounds at night, and as winter melts into spring and spring grows into summer you memorize every tree, every patch of grass, every inch of the land around Hogwarts. You like to wander but you start to hate this place, and you can't wait until next year when you can finally graduate and then disappear.

He finds you one night in the Forbidden Forest, when you are gliding through the black trees like a ghost.

"Are you lost?" James asks, his voice puncturing through the darkness, and you whirl around, staring at him in surprise.

The forest is dark and full of horrors, but he is what you are most afraid of.

"No," you tell him haughtily, pulling your shoulders back, your chin up, because you are Dominique and even now you are too proud to let him see you weak. And then he takes a step toward you, his eyes impossibly warm in the cool night air, and he reaches out a hand like he is about to touch you. His fingers ghost over your shoulder but they do not touch your skin, and you finally admit to lying and change your answer. "Yes," you breathe.

He shudders as your breath slides over his fingers, and then he does touch your shoulder, infuriatingly gently, his rough hand gliding over your skin. You gasp at the sensation and look down at his hand, to make sure it really is there and it isn't another one of your "nightmares." But it is, it's real, and your eyes fly to his.

He is in one of his brooding moods, his expression the darkest you've ever seen, and you see storms behind his eyes. "James," you say softly, your voice tremulous in the night, the word at once a wish and a warning and a prayer.

And then his hand flies off your shoulder, which is instantly freezing, and he's glaring at you. "No," he tells you harshly. "No, we can't!" His breathing is ragged and uneven in the silence.

He runs away then, into the vast forest, and you lean back against a tree, digging your hands into the bark until they bleed.

..

You are seventeen and you haven't said a word to him since that night in May. Now it is August, and all of your cousins laugh at you and think you are playing at seeming old and wise and weary but it's not an act, for once. You really are exhausted and weary of the world, this world full of things you don't care about and stupid rules and silly traditions that don't mean anything.

It's the last summer you'll sleep over with all the cousins at the Burrow, and you suppose it is a little bittersweet and you should probably feel nostalgic, but all you really feel is longing to be like Teddy and Victoire and Molly and Lucy and vanish into the real world, where choices are hard but clear, where consequences stick, where everything is tangible, where people disappoint you but you have to learn to deal with it.

But for one more year, you are still caught in between, and now you know exactly how this sliver of time can be both horrible and beautiful at the same time. (Though it is mostly horrible.) Anything is possible, and what used to be a thrilling notion is now simply terrifying.

Everyone races down to the swimming hole, and you strip out of your clothes down to your bathing suit and jump into the water. But it's hard to laugh and join in the fun when you catch a glimpse of the stars through the treetops and all you can remember is this night, one year ago, when you had floated so close to James in the water and almost felt your world explode.

You are treading water a little apart from the group when a voice breaks into your dark thoughts. "Dom?"

You look over and it's Lily, her red hair shoved into a messy, dripping bun on the top of her head, her freckles standing out against her pale skin.

You force your lips into a tense smile. "Hmm?"

"Why don't you and James talk anymore?" she asks, her brown eyes (his brown eyes) wide in the moonlight.

You blink. What can you possibly respond? Your mind races, and you finally settle on a shrug. "I don't know, Lil, I guess people just grow apart as they get older," you lie, and you almost believe that she's bought it until she looks up at you with a funny look in her eyes.

"Do you think it will happen to me and Louis?" she asks.

Frowning, you reply, "I hope it doesn't," and she's still looking at you funny so you swim away to join the rest of your cousins in their game.

It's a rowdy game of water tag, and you see red hair flying everywhere as your little cousins compete viciously to win. You're barely paying attention to the game. (How can you, when James is just a few feet away from you, determinedly avoiding your eyes, dressed in nothing but swimming trunks?) And then somehow James is "It" and the rest of you all have to swim away from him, and you and Albus are both swimming in the same direction, and James reaches out to tag his brother but he accidentally crashes into you, his large, rough hands sliding around your waist almost of their own accord. Your bodies are pressed against each other under the water and you look up in shock, both of you breathless, your eyes meeting and a shiver running through your body.

"I'm sorry!" James almost shouts, his eyes panicked, and then his hands leave your body and you're swimming away as fast as you possibly can.

"I'm tired," you lie to the others, and you grab a towel and dry off before setting back through the woods to return early to the Burrow. Your mind is a jumble of James' hands and James' chest and James' eyes and James' arms, and you have to get away from there as fast as you possibly can.

You're walking through a clearing among the trees when you suddenly hear footsteps behind you. "Rose?" you call. "Is that you?"

You turn around and freeze instantly. It's him.

You glare fiercely at him, arms crossed defensively. "Go away, James," you order, your blue eyes narrowed.

But he ignores you and advances toward you, and then your world explodes because his hands are running over your body, his strong arms are pulling you into him, and his lips cover your skin in secrets and sin and songs. You hesitate for only a moment before you bring your arms up to cling to his neck, running your fingers through his hair and gasping as he presses feverish kisses to your neck. You pull his head so that your lips can find his, and he groans into you, "Dominique, Dominique, Dominique."

He pulls you down to the ground with him and his hands tear away your skimpy bikini top. His palms, rough and calloused from handling the Quaffle for so many years, press into your ribs. Your sharp nails rake into his back as he grabs your hip hard enough to leave a bruise, and you bite into his lip as he rips away the bottom of your bathing suit.

It's rough and violent and it's months and months and years of frustration and anger and fear and desire. You leave scratch marks and he leaves bruises, but afterward you trace your fingers gently along the broken skin on his back, and he presses kisses into every bruise on your body. "I'm not lost anymore," you pant into his lips, and he smiles into your mouth and tangles his hands in your hair.

..

You are seventeen and infinite. You smile secretly at him during classes, you delight in the way he bites his lip when you oh so casually brush against his leg in the common room. And you laugh as he pulls you into broom cupboards at night, when no one is around to see or hear.

"I love you," James murmurs into your skin one night as you sit in the Forest together, your hand laced through his. He looks at you and he looks a little scared but more sure of it than he has ever been of anything and he goes on, "Dominique, I love –"

"I love you," you interrupt him, throwing your arms around his neck and jumping into his lap, peppering his face with kisses.

That night you lay on the grass together and you stare up at the stars and they're still just little pinpricks of light to you, little white dots burned onto your irises, and you tell James this and he chuckles, his chest rumbling underneath your head.

"You never did like to listen in Astronomy, did you?" he asks fondly, stroking your long hair.

"Fuck Astronomy," you say primly, and you both laugh and laugh and laugh.

..

You are seventeen and fearless when you kiss him on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, the cold wind whipping through your hair. You lose yourself in James until you hear voices and you feel James tense against you. You pull out of his embrace, take in the uncharacteristic fear in his eyes, and turn around hesitantly.

It's Lily and Louis, standing frozen a few feet away from you, having just come up the hill. Your brother and his sister stare at you, their idols, their role models, their eyes confused and wondering.

You push James away from you and run over to them. "Louis," you cry, "Lily, please. Please. Please." It's all you can say and you can't stop crying, so James finally gives up his pathetic pretense and comes over to you, wrapping an arm around you and drawing you into his warm body.

For once, he is the calm and collected one and you are the mess, and you listen as he explains things to Louis and Lily. He leaves some things out, of course, but he tells them the story like they are adults, and you are proud of him for doing so because you think they will appreciate that.

"Don't worry," Lily says, and she smiles up at you reassuringly. "We won't tell."

Louis nods his concordance and then you are still crying but with gratitude, and Merlin, you really are a mess, and then James is rolling his eyes at you and they're gone and the two of you are left alone on the hilltop once again.

..

You are seventeen and you are foolishly arrogant. Louis and Lily keep their word, so you and James figure you have nothing to fear and continue on as you have been doing.

But one night on the couch in the common room, he leans over to whisper something in your ear, and your gaze catches on Rose, who is staring suspiciously at the two of you.

And one day you sit next to James in Defense, and his hand crawls up beneath your skirt under the desk, and you smirk and shiver pleasantly until you see Fred gaping at the sight in horror.

Eventually, it's not a secret anymore and you have to wonder how long you really thought you could keep this up.

Your whole family finds out and there's nothing you can do, really. Your parents refuse to speak to you and his parents ground him in his room and it's over, it's over, it's over.

And you eventually forget how to cry because you've done it so much that you've worn out your tear ducts, and you go back to not sleeping but now it is even worse than it had been during sixth year because you have nothing.

You graduate and you suppose you are somewhat happy to be leaving Hogwarts and disappearing into the real world. That's the lie you tell yourself, anyway, to get through it all.

You and James are still being punished but one evening you feel restless and wild, so you Apparate on impulse and find yourself in the field of heather past the edges of Godric's Hollow. You wander aimlessly and you are almost surprised when you see the fading light glinting off his dark hair from where he sits among the purple and green.

He is sulking, in one of his black moods, and when you look at him at times like this you still feel a secret little thrill at the storms you see behind his eyes.

You involuntarily beam at the sight of him – you haven't seen each other in months, and you can't help but be drawn to him when he is like this, sullen and closed-off and glorying in his loneliness. But he glares up at you darkly.

"No," he tells you firmly, "No, we can't."

But he is used to breaking the rules, and you are used to ignoring what other people want, so he lets you pull him up from his seat on the ground and you look at each other, daringly, your eyes bold and his wild.

"I don't care," you reply.

You can still see storms behind his eyes but he kisses you then, and you wouldn't mind being sucked into the storms as long as he can go on holding you like this forever.

It's been months since you've touched him, so you drag your hands over his messy hair, the planes of his face, his shoulders, wanting to memorize the feel of every inch of him. He closes his eyes and leans into your touch, resting his forehead against yours. "Okay," he breathes. "You're sure?"

"Yes," you murmur, and then you reach up to drag a hand along the back of his neck and into his hair. "Everyone is going to hate us," you tell him casually, the slightest hint of a smirk forming on your lips.

And then he pulls his head back and grins down at you, and it's stupid but your breath still catches in your throat when he looks at you like that. "Fuck everyone," he says, and then you're grinning back at him and you loop your hand in his and whisper to him to take you anywhere before he Apparates you both far away.

..

You are eighteen and you are free.

And you leave your family to crumble without you, but he is James and he is used to getting his way, and you are Dominique and you have always been selfish. At least the two of you have learned in all of this that you are not infinite. You are no longer fearless, but you don't care.

And when he kisses you, you are free, and that is all that matters.

..

A/N: Thank you for reading! If you take the time to favorite, please also leave a review!