i.
James is almost overwhelmingly nosy.
"Interested," he protests. "I'm interested! I want to know more about you. You spent so much time putting me in my place that I don't even know what your third year classes were."
She turns to laugh in his face. "Is this a liar that I see before me?" She settles between his spread legs again, and with her back against him she can feel his indignant humph rise and fall in his chest.
"Okay, so it was Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes, another point to Lily Evans. I still don't know what you wanted to be when you grew up."
"I bet I know what you did."
"Bet you didn't."
"Ten sickles it was Auror or a Quidditch player from the time you were, oh, five, and ten more you told McGonagall the same thing at career advice fifth year."
"Do you accept kisses as payment?"
"Not a chance."
He kisses her anyway. Later, she strengthens the warming charms around them and he lays a kiss next to her ear and whispers, "Don't think I've forgotten about small Lily's hopes and dreams."
"How very serial killer of you to say." James gives her a little nipping pinch below her rib cage so she squirms and laughs. "Alright. A ballerina."
"Like in the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and the trolls?"
"Yes. Exactly." Her voice is very dry for just a moment before is softens. "I took ballet classes, and there was one that my parents would take Petunia and me to see every year, Swan Lake. When I was young it was the closest thing I knew to magic."
"What about now?"
"It might not be all of this," she waved a hand toward the castle, and out toward the lake, where the giant squid had broken through the thin top ice and was waving a tentacle, "but it's still a kind of magic."
"No, I meant what do you want to do now? Or am I going to have to buy a ticket to see you?"
Lily is quiet for a moment. "If it were any other time," she begins, slowly, "I would look into being a Healer."
"But it's now," he nods, and the light around them seems a little dimmer, his arms just a little tighter. "And Healer training takes years."
"The Mediwitch course is shorter. And they've had trouble recruiting since they started sending them out with the Aurors."
"Maybe we'll get to work together, then."
"Quidditch is out? What about Appleby?" She angles her head to see his face just out of the corner of her eye.
He shrugs a little. There's a twitchy kind of hurt in it, and determination too. "They can't resist me. They'll ask again. But it's not what I need to be doing."
She picks up the cider she stole when they snuck out of the Slug Club Christmas party. "To working together, then." He matches her toast, and throws back his glass. There's a silence between them. They listen to the splashing from the lake. After a moment she says, "Promise you won't try to protect me if we're working together."
He snorts. "Sirius would have to protect me for trying." Lily smiles and leans against him, and just for the moment they have new dreams in the chill air of the night.
That evening, Uncle Vernon had spoken about his work at the drill company, some "ridiculous" new council legislation about assisting the elderly, drivers who stopped traffic to let people cross the street, his work at the drill company, modern teenagers and their outrageous music, his work at the drill company, and drills. So Harry was surprised when Dudley looked up from his plate of mashed potatoes and asked, "Dad, what do you do at your work?"
Uncle Vernon sat up straight and talked some more about his new office and the new tower that was being build using drills only from Grunnings. Dudley scooped the last of the potatoes from the bowl.
"Why do you want to know, popkin?" Aunt Petunia asked, shifting some more mashed potatoes from her plate to Dudley's. Harry saw her eyeing his portion, and ate a little faster.
"We're speaking about jobs at school and our teacher said we needed to find out what our parents did."
"Talking about the value of hard work. I suppose that's one thing that school is doing right," Uncle Vernon said loudly, looking over at Harry, who mostly just tried to disappear.
Later, as Harry dried the dishes (Aunt Petunia didn't trust him not to break dishes while washing them) he asked his aunt quietly, "What did my mum and dad do for work?" He knew that Aunt Petunia didn't like to answer questions about Harry's parents, but surely, for school…
"I never asked," she said, sniffing, and turned up the water so it became too loud for questions.
ii.
"Would you stop?" Lily says, but she is laughing. She's showing by now, and James can't stop touching her. He's always been tactile- crooking arms around the necks of the Marauders as they walked together, pounding the backs of his teammates after a Quidditch win and mussing their hair or slapping them upside the head if they lost- but this is something new. The last time they saw Sirius (two weeks ago now, was it? Three?) he had stared and asked if Lily had struck up a friendship with the postman or grocer that made James worry that she was going to run away.
"You know me," said Lily, grinning. "Bathilda Bagshot or nothing, baby."
It's slightly irritating throughout the day, when Lily is supposed to be cooking up potions or lunch for the Order, or tending to the owls who use their house as a stopping point, or trying trying trying to remember enough Ancient Runes to do some useful translation, or any of the other little homebound jobs that are hers now that she's (stupid) pregnant during a damn war. James is out a lot, but when he's home, he's underfoot, sliding warm hands along her shoulders or stroking her palm when she needs to measure these lacewings precisely, oh hell, James.
But in bed at night, just the two of them, she lets him touch her belly and smiles as he rests his lips by her temple. He whispers, "We're going to have a Beater in the family, feel that kicking," and a river of joy runs under the words.
"And what will happen if the baby doesn't like Quidditch? What if we have a rule-abiding, library-loving prefect who only attends matches to give out detentions to people who are cheering too loud?"
A look of total horror comes over his face and he places his palms on either side of her stomach. "Shh, don't say things like that. It'll get ideas." He just glares when Lily starts laughing at him again, and moves down the bed so he can murmur toward the baby. It sounds like he's recounting the James Potter highlight reel.
Lily listens for a few moments, and thinks about making James go get her some of the good chocolate and peppermint biscuits from the cupboard, and rejects the idea, and finally takes a deep breath and says, "James. What if the baby is a squib?"
James stills, stopping in the middle of a description of the time in fourth year he scored sixty points in three minutes. "That isn't going to happen," he says, immediate, sure, and like it was already in his mind
"It's not impossible," says Lily. "There's actually a certain likelihood." She isn't afraid of not loving a child who couldn't do magic. She isn't worried about the haughty whispers that would come. But she thinks of this war that has already lasted years, that could last years more, that could still be going on when their baby is grown and unable to defend itself in their world.
"Then," James says, with all the love and determination that first made Lily understand why the Marauders would follow him anywhere, "Remus will do research, and Sirius and I will design, and Peter will test everything out and tell us where we went wrong, and our kid will have an arsenal even if that doesn't include a wand." He moves up to lie beside Lily. "But I swear, in eleven years we're going to be sitting around the kitchen table, and the pancakes I slaved over will get totally ignored because the owl will come and the kid will be begging to go to Diagon Alley right away and telling us that Gryffindor had better get ready."
"But any house will be fine," Lily adds. She starts to smile, too, and lets herself rest her head beside James as she dreams about her baby, all grown.
Harry listened to Dumbledore. He did not go searching for the Mirror of Erised. He did not return to the room where it had been kept in hopes that it had not yet been moved, so he could get one last glimpse of his parents.
The dormitory was loud with the mumbling and snoring of the other boys, but that was not why Harry found himself awake. He wanted to see his parents' faces again, wanted to make sure that he had soaked up all the details in those hours sitting in front of the mirror. He had never realized before the moment he recognized them that he did not actually know what they had looked like. There had been no pictures of them in Harry's childhood. If pressed, he would have probably assumed that his mother looked like Aunt Petunia. The Dursleys would never have thought it important to mention that Harry's dad couldn't seem to stop touching Harry's mum, or that his mum's smile was warm and lovely even when she was crying. And so Harry stayed awake with his eyes squeezed tight and tried to keep it all there.
Now that he knew what his parents looked like, Harry couldn't help wondering what his life might have been like with them. Not the vague, hopeful situations he had thought of when he was young, the spontaneous rescues and mysteriously explained-away circumstances, but real deliberations of how he might have grown up. He wondered if his mum liked to read and what kind of books, and he wondered if his dad would try to comb his hair right after he got up or if Harry would have looked across the breakfast table to see it mussed everywhere. He wondered if their house would have been large or small, and if it would have had a garden, and if he might have had more siblings.
It would have been different, he thought to himself, trying to keep the images clear in his memory even as he fell into sleep, if I had been with my parents when I got my Hogwarts letter. Did they think about that, when I was small?
iii.
James wants to ask the question. He wants to reach over and brush against Lily's shoulder and speak to her. But he does not because these are his questions and his decision.
Dumbledore came to their sitting room tonight and James wanted him out. The headmaster's office had already changed from a room of schoolboy scoldings to the place where James had cried understanding that his child would be born painted the scarlet of targets not of lions. He did not want that in their home too. But Dumbledore had sat there and sipped tea and told them that he suspected a spy, someone close to them, and James had hoped that Harry would sleep through the slow darkening of their house.
He and Lily did not speak about it as they got ready for bed, but they both know that it must be one of James's brothers. Lily's friends are dead, dead or hiding. It has to be one of the men who are still half boys in James's hopeful, grasping mind. But every time James tries to picture one of them at Voldemort's right hand, the image is laughable. Who would it be? Sirius, his dark features turned cold and arch, his easy power turned to everything James had watched him rebel against? Small, eager Peter who would follow them anywhere? Or Remus, with his soft voice and self-darned sweaters and the quiet, constant disbelief that they wanted him to be there? Lily trusts him to make the decision, because as much as she is their friend too, the four of them are blood and bone, ink and sharpened teeth and moonlight. But how can he imagine their betrayal when their friendship was supposed to mean that being what they were- Noble and Most Ancient, werewolves, or weaklings- was not destiny?
He tries to think what would happen if he had proof. What if he knew absolutely that one of them could look into Harry's small face and think something was more important? He wants to think that he would be able to forgive, to say that he understood the uncertainty of power. He wants to say that he would look into their faces and they would know that his denying mind was filled with fear, and the nauseating forever of the war, and the unsettling questions of what the world would be like after, but that they would help each other beyond.
But his wife sleeps beside him with clenched fists and his baby son's every sound makes James want to see him grown. And he thinks that if this is the truth, he would reach for his wand and protect his family, even if it meant living with the regrets and the limping, scarred remains.
They shouted around Harry about betrayals, about cowardice. Pettigrew was trembling at their feet. Everything felt jumbled to Harry. He looked around the room and realized with something like horror that these men loved his father. He looked at Black, at Lupin, at small, grubby Pettigrew, and thought that these men probably held him as a baby. He thought about another life when they might have minded him as his parents went out and competed to buy him the best birthday presents. He swallowed because even the idea felt foreign and full of an unbelievable yearning.
He glanced over at Ron and Hermione, trying to imagine one of them betraying him to Voldemort. That felt unbelievable too. Was that how his dad would have thought of it, too?
Why did you trust Pettigrew? The thought was bitter in Harry's mind. Black would have died rather than betray you.
He tried to imagine what his father would do if he were here. Would he have his wand out, pointed at Pettigrew with Lupin and Black? Or would he have wanted something different, a chance at repentance, a chance for Lupin and Black to look at each other and not see this moment playing in each other's faces over and over?
Harry stepped between the wands and the rat, and wished he could ask his father if he was making the right choice.
iv.
Lily's parents were married for twenty-four years, James's parents for fifty-five.
"Two years is a good start," James says. One of Lily's Muggle songs plays quietly in the background. James, who grew up with wizard waltzes, defers to her in regards to music. "For number three we'll actually go out somewhere."
"You put eighteen months into imagining what we would do for our first date. Are you sure you'll be ready by then?"
James splutters. "No. What? Eighteen months? No. Who's been…? No." His hands move from Lily's waist to his hair. "Goddamn Sirius," he says, shoulders slumping.
Lily kisses him for a long moment, palms and rings against his face. "The time was worth it. It was an excellent date. I especially liked the part where you saw McGonagall walking nearby and almost passed out thinking that she was there to give you detention."
"I'd have known it was a setup if she had. I was on my best behavior that week." Lily raises an eyebrow. Best behavior was a slightly fluid concept where James was concerned. "But that was when I realized I was in love with you, so it was alright."
"Excuse me?"
"Well, I had been…" He gives a gesture that she interprets to mean publically infatuated with you. "For a while, but that was the moment. You waved to McGonagall, as a joke, but then when you saw that I was truly bothered by it, you apologized. You said it just like that: 'Oh, James, I apologize.'"
"You had tried to hide behind a bush," Lily grins, "what else was could I have said?"
"It just showed me how amazing you were. That you had a sense of humor and could keep my ego in check, but that you were compassionate too." They sway in silence for a moment; the music has stopped behind them. "When was it for you? Was it the first moment you saw my face and thought, that James Potter is so handsome?"
"What happened to keeping your ego in check?" she asks with a little flick to the space under his ear.
"I just need to be around you for a little while longer." He catches her fingers when she goes to do it again and kisses the tips. "So, when was it?"
Her mouth purses and twitches to one side. James isn't sure whether she's stopping up a laugh or just deciding what to say. She sighs after a minute. "Defense, during seventh year. We were working on Patronuses."
"A difficult piece of magic, my young friends." James imitates their teacher from that year, Professor Merriweather.
"You got it during class, but almost everyone else got together that night to try again. I watched you go around helping everyone, and I watched how you were different with each person. Joking with Sirius, and playful with Janie, and gentle with Peter. I watched how much you cared about everyone being able to protect themselves. And you came over to me and just said, 'When it happens, it'll feel like when you're dancing,' and later that night I made my first Patronus. You looked at me and smiled and then made one of your own. And you looked at them next to each other, bumped against my shoulder, and said, 'I hope you find me endeering, because I find you adoerable.'" The thought of it still makes her laugh, and then shrug. There's something soft in it, in the memories and the distance from the ancient innocence of their school-selves. "That was probably it."
James stays quiet for a moment. "Well, I still find you adoerable and probably will until I die, so I hope you continue to find me endeering."
Lily closes her eyes as a smile, quiet and contented, comes over her face. "You're growing on me. I'll keep you around for a while."
Sirius and Lupin had not made him feel better. Harry thought of the way his parents had looked at each other at their wedding. He tried to allow himself to be convinced that they could not have truly hated each other, that it would have been impossible to transform their eyes from the way they had looked at each other in Snape's Pensieve. He wanted to pretend that somehow "he grew up and they began dating" was a sufficient, reasonable explanation, but could not quite manage it.
He shut the album, finger worrying at a corner. He had no experience with the people in it, and it slid to the forefront of his mind how frustrating that is. Having them around would have made it so easy to just ask them about it. Having them around might have meant that he would already know, that their story would have been stitched into his childhood in small remarks and offhanded memories. But regardless of Ginny's insistence that anything was possible with enough imagination, this simply wasn't.
v.
Harry rests between them, and for the first time in years, they feel as if they might be safe.
"It's almost like I can see the protection, you know?" he says.
She wants to tell him that it's a ridiculous idea, but it isn't. She can almost see it too, in the swaddling shadows surrounding their house. There's a feeling of eternity to it all. She's sung loudly in the shower for the past two days. He bakes fresh bread and they eat it with butter and raspberry jam. They try not to think of the betrayal. They try to remember the protection of the spell that means that they are loved by a friend.
It has been so long since they have thought of later, of after, that the words come to them with the wavering quality of childhood memories.
"One day, Harry, we're going to watch you go to the best school in the world," says one, voice hushed.
"In a few years, Harry, you won't just be making these little sparks when you have a bad dream. You'll be making friends, your best friends, falling in love, finding a future," whispers the other.
Someday they'll fix things. Someday there will be peace and they will sew their friends back together as best they can. But they think of Harry first. Because if they can make it through this so that he will never have to think of these things, they will know they have survived.
At Shell Cottage, Harry sat beside the ocean. He thought about the way there were hollow edges to Luna's vacancy now, and how Dean looked diminished, so that it was hard for Harry to picture him in their Hogwarts classes or cheering in the Quidditch stands or yelling at Seamus about his disgusting lucky socks in their dormitory. He thought about how sometimes his eyes caught Ron's and he knew that they could both still hear the precise pitch Hermione's scream. He thought about how Hermione's muscles tensed every so often, how her eyes widened, and her finger touched at her throat. He thought about Dobby's grave.
He thought about the Weasleys, how they had built a house and raised children in it, with the shadow of the war hiding in the corners. If they managed this, if all the Horcruxes were gone, if Voldemort was gone, and anyone survived, Harry didn't know that any of them could live without that shadow.
He looked at the waves. He wondered how his parents would have done it. With a gritted kind of hopelessness, he knew that there was no use in that question. He could not ask them. Even if he could, they hadn't had a chance to find out how to live after their war. And he had no assurance that he would either.
vi.
"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off-!" Running wandless, just Quidditch instincts and love for his wife, his son.
"Not Harry! Please, no, not Harry! I'll do anything!" Hoping that love will be enough for her baby to have a chance to grow up, to have friends and classes and questions. Hoping that it will be enough even if he does not remember them.
"You're a bit of a fopdoodle, aren't you, love?"
Harry had been married to Ginny for years and he was still surprised when one of Mrs. Weasley's insults came out of her mouth. He tried to laugh, but just groaned.
"Dad?" James sounded the same way he used to when he came into his parents' room late at night after a bad dream.
"'m alright, Jamie," Harry said. Lying on the ground hurt his head, but the idea of trying to move hurt worse.
"See, Jamie, your dad and his rock-head are fine. And he would be even better if he hadn't gotten in the way of a bludger and fallen from fifteen feet because he didn't remember that Teddy and I charmed all the Quidditch gloves so the balls wouldn't hit you kids."
"I'm going to try to sleep some more," Harry told his wife, cracking an eye open with great and shattering effort. "More peaceful than listening to this."
"Come on, let's go inside, leave your mum and dad" Teddy said. Squinting up at the blurry sky, Harry could hear his children's fading voices.
"Dad's going to have a bruise for a month," Lily said before the door closed and there was just Ginny's quiet, full breathing and the breezy sounds of their backyard.
"You are going to have that bruise for a month," Ginny said eventually.
Harry managed to sit up carefully, levered back on his hands and still dazed. "I know."
"I understand that it's your instinct." Ginny rested an arm around him. "But your instinct is an idiot."
"Yes," said Harry, leaning against her.
He had been worried the first time he saw Teddy that all he would see was loss, Remus and Tonks resting still in the Great Hall. He had cried that first time, as Teddy's hair flickered between bright blue and Harry's true black, but mostly he had been worried that he wouldn't hold Teddy right, that he would hurt him or let him fall.
He'd been a broken seventeen then, unprepared by far to be a father, but he understood fatherhood for the first time. His love for his children was unconscious, weighty, and different from all that faithful sacrifice for the world. Looking at Teddy for the first time, at James, at Al, at Lily, he had understood a love of selflessness and selfishness too. Because he would give his life to protect any of them, but he also saw his own future in them. He hoped that they understood the power of his love, that they saw it in everything that he did and never questioned it. He had no memories of his parents' love for him, but his life, his future, had always been enough. He leaned over to kiss Ginny's temple.
Voice quiet, he said, "My instinct is an idiot, but it isn't going away."
"I know," Ginny said. "I love your idiotic instinct. And I understand it." Her arms wrapped around his and she pressed her nose into his shoulder. "But try to remember about the bludgers next time."
"I thought you liked my scars."
Ginny laughed, round and loose. "You wish, Potter."
Something shattered inside the house. They heard Al's voice, then Lily's, and Teddy shushing them all. Harry and Ginny looked at each other. "I'm somehow managing to suppress the instinct," said Harry, and pulled Ginny back to look up at the sky.