Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, and I am not making any money off of this.

A/N PLEASE READ: Okay, so this is obviously a Next Gen fic. But there are a few important things that you need to know first. The most important thing being that while this fic is canon compliant for the most part, it is a slight AU. For instance while Fred did die in this, he died a lot more brutally then he did in the books. Another example is that I've moved up the time of when James Sirius Potter was born, and consequently the time that his siblings and cousins were born. I did this because I wanted to have a smaller age gap between Teddy and James. And lastly, throughout the story we'll see a lot about Harry's past, along with Hermione, Ron, and Ginny. Everything will be canon for the most part, but you'll notice differences where (like Fred's death) things happened slightly more brutally then they did in canon, or you'll notice the inclusion of events that did not happen in canon (most of these will be minor, but I can't tell you now what they'll be.) Anything you notice that is not canon or canon compliant has been done on purpose, so you don't need to point anything that isn't canon out –this is a (slight) AU.

So, since I've moved up the timeline a bit I'll give you the ages of everyone as they are at the start of the story; Teddy 25, James 20, Albus 19, Lily 17, Rose 19, Hugo 17, Fred 20, Roxanne 17, Victoire 23, Dominique 21, Louis 19, Molly 21, and Lucy 17. And although it's not important since this is sent the first summer after everyone has graduated, all of them were in Gryffindor. I know that isn't a popular choice for a lot of people, but in my opinion the Weasleys are always in Gryffindor and I don't see that changing. As for Albus, since Harry told him that the sorting hat takes their opinions in mind and Albus was relieved by this information I think he chose Gryffindor. As for Teddy, in my head he takes after Remus and ended up in Gryffindor. But like I said, it's not important to the story.

Warnings: Violence (mostly in the past, but some in the present due to Harry being an Auror), child abuse (in the past, not current), swearing, and possible slash (possible only –I'm not sure yet but wanted to give a warning just in case).

Summary: James, Teddy, Lily, Al, and the rest of the Weasley cousins are all graduated from Hogwarts now. They grew up hearing all about the second Wizarding war, but they are soon to find out that there is still so much that they don't know. The war has always seemed distant, abstract, in their happy world. But now that they are adults they are starting to realize just what their parents went through, and how much it still affects them. Through all of this they learn that no matter how old you are sometimes you just need your parents, and sometimes they need you too.

Sorry for the SUPER LONG A/N, let's move onto the actual story now. One final note, bold means that they are watching someone, as if that person were on TV,

"This was a great idea!" Lucy shouted, lifting her arms up and gesturing around them causing her drink to spill slightly onto the grass. "Can you believe that my father thought it was a bad idea? He almost didn't let me go, as if I'm not 17 and can make the choice myself!" Lucy twirled, her arms flung out, before getting too dizzy and toppling sideways into James.

James laughed, "I think I can see why Uncle Percy would think that." He chuckled some more, prying the drink out of her hand.

"Hey, that's mine!"

"You'll thank me in the morning." James replied, as he steadied Lucy. It was two weeks into summer, and Lily, Hugo, Roxanne, and Lucy had all just graduated from their final year at Hogwarts. It had been James' idea for all the cousins to rent a cabin in the middle of nowhere and celebrate the fact that they were all adults and Hogwarts graduates now. But with thirteen of them (including Teddy of course) it hadn't been easy to plan. Luckily they were as close as cousins could be really, and everyone had shifted their schedules and they'd made it work. They now had three full weeks off to relax and hang out with each other. Something they hadn't been able to do properly for a while.

Of course it was a cousin's only trip, one of James better ideas he thought. It was the first night and they'd broken out the firewhiskey early on in honor of the four graduates. Glancing down at Lucy, James chuckled again. Obviously his cousin hadn't done much partying at Hogwarts. "Steady now?"

Lucy nodded, swaying slightly. "I—"She stopped abruptly, clutching her stomach. "I think I'm going to be sick." She said, looking pretty green before dashing off back towards the cabin.

"Lucy!" Lily shouted, running after her. "Lucy, no! Not on the—"

James laughed again before rejoining Fred, Dominique, Hugo, and Molly around the campfire. Al, Rose, and Louis were swimming in the lake, and Teddy and Victoire were cuddling and stargazing. They stayed there for the next half hour, laughing and joking, and making smores before Al, Rose, and Louis finally got cold enough to get out of the lake and warm up by the fire. Not long after that Victoire and Teddy joined them by the fire as well, to some good natured teasing by the rest of them.

Teddy just rolled his eyes as Fred made fake gagging noises at Victoire and Teddy cuddling. "Come off it Fred" Teddy said, throwing a smore at Fred's head and just barely missing "Like you weren't just as bad with your last girlfriend. What was her name again…?"

"Sarah." Roxanne replied, sounding disgusted.

James groaned, "She was awful, a total air-head."

"She wasn't that bad!"

"Fred, I say this with love mate but yes. She really was that bad." Everyone laughed as James added, "Besides, you were only with her because she had big ti—" Fred shoved James good naturedly before he could finish, resulting in a short wrestling match that only ended when Lily came back out of the cabin.

"I don't suppose anyone brought some hangover potion? Because Lucy is really going to need one tomorrow."

"Oh no, is she okay?" Molly asked.

"Well, she's finally finished puking her guts up. She's asleep now." Lily said, stealing a smore from Albus.

They stayed by the fire talking, laughing, and drinking for a few more hours before finally heading to bed around three in the morning.

James awoke the next morning to a severe pounding in his head, and his mouth tasting like a rat had crawled in and died there at some point during the night. He could already hear movement in the kitchen, and slowly made his way downstairs, his stomach lurching unpleasantly. Entering the kitchen he saw Fred, Molly, Lily, Al, Roxanne, Dominique, and Teddy. He assumed that Lucy, Victoire, Louis, and Hugo were all still asleep. The lucky bastards.

Flopping into the chair next to Dominique he groaned pathetically, and took the glass of water that Molly handed him. "Why didn't we think to bring hangover potion?"

"Because we're idiots." Fred said his voice muffled since his head was face down on the table.

"Ugh." Molly groaned. "I can't decide if some nice greasy bacon will help my stomach or make it worse…"

"Don't even talk about bacon." Teddy muttered, looking rather green.

Lily stood up, "I'm going to lay down in the living room until everything stops spinning."

Roxanne lurched to her feet immediately after, "Laying down sounds really good right now." Dominique grabbed two pitchers of water, and slowly they all filed into the living room. There weren't enough couches for everyone so they cast cushioning charms on the floor and lined it with pillows and blankets in a makeshift bed. Over the next few hours they were slowly joined by Victoire, Louis, Hugo, and Lucy (who looked by far the worst).

All thirteen of them lay sprawled across the couches and makeshift bed on the floor until late afternoon, only getting up occasionally to get more water or make a quick dash for the bathroom. Eventually when they were feeling slightly more human, but still not well enough to actually do anything Victoire made everyone some hangover friendly food. No longer feeling completely like death, but still feeling crappy enough to not want to move around James was getting bored.

"I wish we had a television or something."

"A what?" Louis asked, looking confused.

"A television." James replied. "Muggles use it to watch people. Grandpa told me about it." Rose looked as if she wanted to tell James exactly what a television was really used for, but she couldn't seem to work up the energy.

"That'd be nice, distract us from our pounding heads."

"Don't forget our rebelling stomachs Louis." Lucy said, looking rather pathetic as she tried not to move too much.

"We could use the Looking Glass."

"The what?" Teddy asked Fred. James was curious too, he'd never heard of a 'Looking Glass' before.

"Yeah, it's something my dad developed. I found it in his workroom. They're these glass marble type things. You take as many of the smaller ones as you want and link them to the larger one. Then you set the smaller ones to follow people, they become invisible. Then you put the large one on a flat surface, and it expands to fit it. Once that's done you just say the name of one of the people you set the marble to follow and they show up on the one you set up on the flat surface. You can see and hear everything apparently."

"I didn't know your dad had anything like that." Said Albus curiously.

"Neither did I." Roxanne added, looking slightly offended as it was her father that had apparently made this 'Looking Glass.'

Fred shrugged. "It was in his discarded 'can't sell these' box. In his notes it said that he'd developed them as the next step after the Extendable Ears, but he decided that they could be too much of a liability for invasion of privacy so he scrapped them. They're completely functional though, according to his notes."

Victoire frowned, "Well I'm glad he scrapped them, that would definitely be an invasion of privacy since the person in question would never know that it was happening."

Teddy just shrugged, "No point in getting worked up about it, it's not like we have any to use anyway."

"So it's back to square one." Lily said. "Bored, but still feeling too sick to actually do anything."

"I do have them actually." Fred said, grinning slightly. "When I first found them I set them to follow mum and dad, along with Uncle Harry, Uncle Ron, Aunt Hermione, Aunt Ginny, Uncle Bill, and Grandpa. We could use it if we want." This sparked a short debate on if they should use it or not, it didn't last long since nobody had the energy to argue much anyways. It was finally decided that they would use them once Al had pointed out that they used to spy on their parents all the time as kids anyways.

Fred took out the master marble and flattened it against the wall until it took up the majority of the wall in front of the couched and makeshift bed. First they used it on Arthur Weasley, but he hadn't been doing anything interesting so they moved onto Bill. He hadn't been doing anything interesting either, and slowly they made their way through George (inventing, which had kept them entertained for a while) to Ron (doing paperwork, not entertaining at all), to Hermione (at work), to Ginny who was having a girls night with some of her friends from work. That had been amusing for a short while, but after fifteen minutes of listening to their mom and aunt chat with her coworkers they had quickly gotten bored.

"Move onto Uncle Harry already." Said Hugo. "He's bound to be doing something more interesting than this." There was a general murmur of agreement to this, so Fred switched the view to Harry.

James looked on interestedly as his Dad came onto the screen. His dad was… well James didn't know where he was. It certainly wasn't anywhere James recognized, he looked at Teddy, Al, and Lily. "Do you know where he is?"

All three shook their heads, "No idea." Said Teddy, looking confused. "But it looks like a muggle neighborhood."

"But what is Dad doing in a muggle neighborhood?" Lily asked.

"He's going up to one of the houses, maybe we'll recognize whoever lives there." Al said, before falling silent as they watched his dad knock on the door of the muggle house. Everyone stopped talking, curious to see who Harry was visiting.

A horse faced woman opened the door, and scowled at Harry. "Well don't just stand there! Get in before someone sees you." Harry stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Harry stood in the doorway for a moment, looking around himself before following the woman into the kitchen, where large man was already sitting and scowling at Harry as well. "It hasn't changed a bit." Harry said mildly, gesturing at the house around them.

The man's scowl deepened, his face turning red. "We didn't call you here for idle chit chat boy. Sit down so we can get this over with." The woman was already sitting nervously beside her husband.

"Not very polite are they?" Dominique asked, rhetorically.

"They've skipped polite and caught the Hogwarts Express to flat out rude." Molly replied. James couldn't help but agree. What the hell was his dad doing with these people?

"You're the ones that called me." Harry reminded them. "If you want me gone that badly you shouldn't have called."

The woman sneered, "Yes, we were rather surprised that you were listed in the phone book. I thought your kind didn't use the telephone like us normal folk."

Harry's face hardened. "We don't usually, but we live in a muggle neighborhood and it comes in useful sometimes. And might I remind you that I haven't seen you in what – twenty five years or so? And that my time here wasn't exactly pleasant. There was no reason for me to come here, at your request, and there is certainly isn't a reason for me to stay."

"He knows these people?"

Teddy nodded, "I guess so. Twenty five years, that means he'd have been nearly seventeen."

"Don't you take that tone with me you little freak!" The man was rapidly turning purple now and his many chins were shaking in anger.

"Might I also remind you Uncle Vernon that this Freak is now a fully grown wizard and able to use magic legally? Just imagine what I could do now, if I was able to blow up Aunt Marge when I was only thirteen…"

There was complete silence after his dad finished talking. Uncle? His dad had an Uncle? "I didn't think Uncle Harry had any family!" Rose exclaimed.

"He doesn't." Lily replied, confused. "At least that's what I've always thought. He's never talked about having family before."

Teddy looked as nonplused as James felt. "His parents died when Voldemort went after him, and Sirius Black –his godfather- was in prison. These people must be who he grew up with."

"He never mentioned it." James said, looking around at everyone. "I never thought to ask."

Al nodded. "I never really realized it before, but now that you mentioned it other than Dad's Hogwarts years he doesn't talk about his childhood at all. I don't know why that's never occurred to me before…"

"The family is so big, with Dad, Aunt Ginny, Uncle George, Uncle Bill, Uncle Percy, Uncle Charlie, and everyone's significant others." Rose said thoughtfully. "There are just so many Weasleys that I guess whenever they were telling stories about being kids our parents always told theirs because they all grew up together and could reminisce together."

Lucy nodded, "That makes sense. Why would any of us, even you four James, Teddy Al, and Lily, think to ask about Uncle Harry's childhood when there were already so many exciting stories about his Hogwarts years and our parents growing up together?" James frowned, uncomfortable with the fact that there was an entire part of his dad's life that he knew nothing about.

"How dare you threaten me in my own home boy!"

"Merlin, would he quit calling him boy? Dad is thirty nine, hardly a boy!"

"Vernon please, calm down. Let's just get this over with."

Vernon seemed to visibly restrain himself. "Of course pet."

Harry just raised a sarcastic eyebrow, "Yes, why did you call me here Aunt Petunia?" In answer she slid a piece of paper across the table at him; frowning Harry picked it up and looked it over. "A bill." He said flatly.

"Yes, it's what it cost to keep you growing up."

Harry's face was unreadable. "Room," he read off the list, laughing without any real humor. "I'd hardly call my cupboard a room." He said, gesturing to the cupboard under the stairs and in his anger causing the door of the cupboard to fly open unknowing allowing James and everyone else a good look inside.

Vernon bristled. "It was more then you deserved! And you had Dudley's second bedroom after your eleventh birthday."

"Right." Harry said sarcastically. "How could I forget? Dudley's second bedroom that you fitted with bars on the windows, and locks on the outside to keep me in. Oh, and let's not forget the cat flap you put in to slip me a piece of bread once a day…"

"And clothes?" Harry continued, reading down the list. "You never bought me clothes, I always got Dudley's cast offs, which I could usually fit four of myself into might I add."

"Let's see, education. Well you didn't pay for my public education in primary, and you certainly didn't pay for me to go to Hogwarts. Hell you didn't even buy me pen and paper for primary." Harry scanned the list some more. "Damages? What the fuck for?"

"That blasted red headed family destroying out living room!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "They put it back together again. What else… food. Right, I'm so sure that giving me your leftovers, or the stale bread, or moldy cheese cost you that much. And what the hell do you want me to pay you for 'undue emotional harm and distress' for?"

"For ruining our lives you ungrateful freak!"

"Ruining your lives? Causing you undue emotional harm and distress? I'm the one you were constantly calling 'boy' and 'freak'. I'm the one that didn't know my own name until I entered primary school and the teacher called me by it. I'm the one that was lied to and told that my parents were drunks that got themselves killed and that they didn't love me. I'm the one that was constantly told what a burden I was, that you constantly blamed for everything! I'm the one you lot used as your in house slave –doing all the cooking, cleaning, and yard work for as far back as I can remember. I'm the one that you would starve and lock away for weeks at a time whenever you wanted to punish me. I'm the one that you knocked around, trying to 'stamp' the magic out of me –not that I knew that was your reason at the time. And yet I'm the one that cause you harm?" Harry was breathing hard, clearly angry.

"It was no more then you deserved! We should have drowned you when we found you on our doorstep, but we took you in out of the goodness of our hearts. You owe us!"

"Out of the goodness of your hearts? You took me in because Aunt Petunia was smart enough to know that you'd be protected when Voldemort came back!"

"Listen here you little bastard, we gave you more then you deserved. This is what you owe us for raising you, and you will pay it." Petunia said, hissing like an angry mongoose.

"Why now?" Harry asked. "Why come to me with this bill now? Can't afford to keep up your lavish lifestyle now that Uncle Vernon is retired?" Harry had obviously hit the head on the nail judging by their expressions. Harry was silent for a few moments. "Fine. I'll give you the money. But after that I never want to hear from you again."

"Fine."

"I'll mail you a check." And with that Harry got up and walked out of number four Privet Drive.

"Turn it off." James said; his head spinning. "Fred, turn it off!" Fred scrambled to do just that, and once he had the room was thrown into complete silence. How, how in James' twenty years of life had he never known this about his dad's childhood? How had he never thought to ask? Why had it never even occurred to him? He felt sick to his stomach; his dad –his amazing, kind, good hearted dad that had always, always been there for him- had been knocked around? Forced to live in a Cupboard? Starved? Been called a freak?

"Teddy, I- Did you…?"

Teddy shook his head, his hair no longer its normal vibrant turquoise but a mousey brown. "I had no idea. No idea. Twenty five years, and I had no idea. Never even thought to ask, it never occurred to me to ask…"

"Do you think Mom knows?" Lily asked, looking between James, Al, and Teddy as the rest of their cousins sat by awkwardly wondering what to say or do.

"Maybe? No. I don't know." Al said. "I don't know what to think."

"I want to see him. Dad. I want to go see dad." Said Lily abruptly, looking upset. "I need to see him."

Rose hugged Lily, "Of course. You four should all go. Go talk to him tonight and spend some time with him. It's only four o'clock in the afternoon. You can spend the evening, and tomorrow, and then come back tomorrow night."

James nodded, "Yeah. I think that's a good idea." James may be twenty, but right now he felt like he was ten years old again and needed his dad to fix everything –the way he always did. Slowly Teddy, James, Al, and Lily got up and headed outside to apparate to the Potter household for the night.

So, that's the first chapter. The fic does have an overall plot, and this is by no means that focus of it -its just a part.

Please review and let me know what you think :)