Lily painted pictures, painted red, great big ugly scratches on the canvas, painted green for death (though James said black) (Remus knew though, green and red, the bloodied field and trenches, Remus knew). Remus paled. "Paint blue," he said, "paint yellow." Lily looked up at the sky. "It's grey," said James, he said to her, "it's raining," but she smiled, Lily smiled, and opened her mouth for the drops.

They fell, one two, and Remus laughed, "they're drops and yet they're rivers." Here we go again, thought James, and yet he smiled, as he ever smiled now not quite a smile but a curl of lips he curled thought isn't that like Remus?

"It's flooding," Lily said and James said, "yes," and Sirius said, "no," "the end," said Lily, said, "or the beginning," and James said, "no" and Sirius said, "yes," but then he wasn't hadn't couldn't be the Sirius James knew who died with Peter Peter on the fields Peter red and pink and Peter died and Sirius and Remus in the mud, the wet, the green and red and rain. James had flown, and everyone was tiny and he looked at no one when they died he never saw their faces nor their eyes just swathes of green and honeyed fields of wheat of blood of pictures just like Lily's so he told her, "no," again.

Sirius said, "yes," and Remus blushed, "yes," and Lily waited (she was good at waiting, so good now) but James just thinned his lips and muttered Latin as he always did when Lily spoke of possibilities. Perhaps each time she offered James agreed and also James was James, and other Jameses peeled with other Lilies into worlds beyond their poetry and paint, but Lily's James wrote verses and Lily ordered coffee as he wrote and never told her, "now," and never did they leave in case they never could come back to where they were. (The map showed only present, only "now," and never "then," never the imprint Peter made, never his body lost his spirit gone never his footsteps never the dirt and rats and bedbugs only now Vienna summer only spring only cups of coffee only Lily and these men she used to know and learned all over now that then had come and gone.)

Lily did not tell him of the child, of the life (could James make life? Could she?) but when he saw her knitting said it was for practice, said, "I undo all the stitches in the evening; come to bed," and there at least he went and so did she.

She painted flowers on the ceiling, on the walls, and painted blue and painted yellow painted crib and rocking chair, and sat then there James found her, in her hidden room, and said, "he's on the map," and so she knew it was a boy, that it was Harry. So she knew.

"It's like the water," Remus said, "we're drops and we're a river. we leave pieces everywhere and we reform we flow from place to place from bank to bank we rise and ebb and trace ourselves across the map."

"It's Harry," Sirius said, "he's Harry," James said, "yes," and peeled himself away.

"My parents changed the world," said Harry later, when he'd grown and lived and left his footprints on the world the map he said, "my parents changed the world," but Luna said, "they made it."