Disclaimer: I own nothing outside of the confines of my mind.
The Most Important Thing
Harry sat curled up on the floor beneath Hagrid's coat, thinking. His had surely been the most interesting eleventh birthday in the history of the world, and it had just begun. His mind was reeling with all that he had been told. He was a wizard, his parents had been murdered by an evil dark wizard, he himself had defeated that wizard somehow, and he was leaving the Dursleys', off to a school where he would learn magic, cast spells, and brew potions.
The coat gave a slight twitch. A furry white nose poked its way out of one of the pockets. It sniffed the air warily, before the rest of the creature emerged. It was a young mouse, no larger than Harry's index finger from nose to tail. Scrambling across the fuzzy jacket, it came to rest on Harry's shoulder, regarding him curiously. Before Harry could react, a pair of larger mice streaked out of the pocket to join the first. A little mouse family. Harry smiled slightly and extracted a hand from beneath the heavy coat, intending to pet the young mouse's sleek snowy coat. However, before his fingers made contact, the parent mice ushered their child away, darting out the broken door of the shack, leaving Harry alone.
Family. Harry had learned a lot in the past couple of hours, not the least of which the existence of an entire magical world. Of all of it, though, what interested him most was what Hagrid had told him about his parents. Over the years, the Dursleys had mentioned Harry's parents only to deride them. He had known literally nothing about them except that they were dead, supposedly because of a car crash, and that Harry's mother was Aunt Petunia's sister. But now, he knew much more. He knew that his parents had learned magic at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; that they were talented wizards, had been head boy and girl at school; that they had fought in a war alongside someone named Dumbledore; that his father looked like Harry, but Harry had his mother's vivid green eyes.
He knew his parents' names. Of everything that he had learned, that was the most important, the knowledge that he would cherish closest to his heart. In the ten years he had lived with the Dursleys, they had never once referred to his mother and father by their first names. They were, upon the rare occasion when they were mentioned, his "good-for-nothing parents," Petunia's "rotten sister" and "that rotten husband of hers." To the Dursleys, they were hardly people, invaluable memories, undeserving of the simple courtesy of a name. It had been a hole inside of him, a missing part of who he was. But now that hole was filled, and he fell asleep at last, those two simple words rolling around in his head, penetrating his dreams.
Lily. James.