James

Being Harry Potter's son was a source of constant stress for Albus, but not James. No, James loved the fact that people would gawp at him as he passed in the street, and later in the corridors of Hogwarts.

It wasn't that James was an attention-seeker. He liked his mischief, and he couldn't deny that the way the girls swooned at him whenever he shot them a wink was appealing, but he didn't crave the spotlight. He just always happened to be thrust into it.

"Your grandfather would be proud of you!" People always declared, whenever he and Fred pulled off a successful prank, or he scored in a Quidditch game. It made him feel elated, like he was somehow living up to the legacy. When people compared him to his grandfather and namesake, it was incredible. But when people compared him to his dad, it was even better. His classmates would look at him in wonder, and mutter behind their hands about how amazing James Potter actually was.

For most of them, his father was a constant source of nervous excitement. The Boy Who Lived. The Chosen One. The Saviour. The man who defeated the greatest dark wizard of all time. He was more of a myth than an actual person, to those people. In some ways, James held him in the same regard.

The hero-worship of the masses was matched in earnest by James's starry-eyed idolization of his dad.

He'd always remember the day when he discovered that his father was a man just like any other.

James had been seventeen, and home for the summer. Kreacher had turfed him out of his room unceremoniously, with a gruff 'Kreacher needs to clean. Master James will kindly get lost.' He'd gotten up with a grumble, knowing there was nothing to entertain him in the house today.

Al was studying – for what, James didn't have a clue, considering he'd just finished his OWLs – and Lily was off… well, doing whatever it was that Lily did whenever she had a spare moment. James had long since stopped trying to figure out the enigma that was his baby sister. It was best to leave her to it.

He'd paced the garden restlessly – his mother had put a caterwauling charm on the broom shed to prevent him from taking his Firebolt out for a spin. Even though he was technically of age, she'd maintained that he could still be punished as long as he lived under her roof, and his deliberate attempt to frighten his muggle cousins last week was reason enough to keep his broom under lock and key, in her eyes.

James didn't see what the big deal had been – so he fed them all canary creams with their cups of tea? – But Ginny Potter was not a woman to trifle with, so he'd accepted the punishment with minimal complaint. Still, he was itching to take to the skies, or just find something, anything to stop him feeling so cooped up. James didn't handle boredom well.

It was when he let himself back into the kitchen that James caught sight of his father, slumped over the old oak table with his head in his hands. He recognised the defeated posture – he'd been the cause of it many times before – but there was something about the way his shoulders were shaking that made James pause. It looked as though he was crying.

"Dad?" he murmured, crossing the kitchen in four strides and hovering by his father's left side.

His father's head lifted, and those famous green eyes met his own brown ones. James was startled to see that they were wet. In all his life, he'd never seen his dad cry before. He was Harry Potter. Unshakable. Immovable.

"Dad, is everything okay?"

His father scrubbed one arm across his eyes, brushing away the tears. He attempted a smile in James' direction, but it was a feeble one. "I'm okay, James."

"No, you're not." James reached over and pulled out the chair next to him, before dropping into it. He leaned forwards with his forearms resting on the polished wood, staring intently at his father's face. He'd aged remarkably well, but James thought that the lines across his forehead looked somehow deeper than they had the day before. "What's wrong?"

Instead of replying, his father just shifted slightly in his chair. A flash of white drew James' gaze down to his dad's hand. There was a feather pressed between his fingers – a white owl feather.

"Where did you get that?" he asked, nodding at the object. "None of us have a snowy owl."

"I found it in Sirius's old room," his father responded quietly. "It was under the desk."

"Kreacher must've missed it when he was cleaning," James said with a shrug. "Why are you upset?"

His dad gave him a small smile. "It just brought back old memories, that's all."

"The feather?"

"Yeah. You know, I got my first owl for my eleventh birthday."

James felt like there was something he was missing, but he went along with his father's conversation all the same. There was something about seeing him cry that had deeply unnerved him.

"Oh."

"Hagrid gave her to me as a present. I'd just found out I was a wizard, and he went and bought her for me. He told me that every kid should have an owl."

"Unless you're Lily," James put in, with a smile. He was relieved to see his father grin at this.

"Unless you're Lily," he agreed. James's sister had refused point-blank to buy an owl when their parents had offered. She maintained that it was cruel, keeping a hunting bird like that locked up in a cage and sending them to deliver messages. James remembered Uncle Ron overhearing one of her outbursts, once. He'd nudged James's father with one elbow and muttered something about Lily resurrecting 'spew' before they all knew it. His dad had laughed hard at that, until Aunt Hermione shushed the pair of them, rolling her eyes in that very Aunt Hermione-ish way.

"What did you call her?" James asked.

"Huh?"

"Your owl."

"Oh." His father smiled, a real one that time. "Hedwig. She was a snowy owl."

"I've never heard you mention Hedwig before," James said, eyeing his father askance. "Whatever happened to her?"

His father's expression clouded over, and James suddenly wished he hadn't asked. He guessed the answer even before he spoke. "She was killed the summer I left the Dursleys. Death Eaters hit her with a curse that was meant for me."

The way he said it, the way the guilt warped his voice, made James's chest ache uncomfortably. He'd never been a particularly empathetic person, but his father's pain in that moment was as real to him as if it were his own.

"Is that why you won't have an owl?" James wondered, the thought suddenly occurring to him. "Because of Hedwig?"

His father twirled the feather between his fingers for a long moment before answering. "She was my first real friend. It just never seemed right to replace her."

James knew his father's biography inside and out. He'd been raised learning the stories of how, when his father was a little boy, he'd lived in the cupboard under the stairs in Privet Drive. He'd been bullied at school. Secretly, James had never really believed any of that. His dad was too strong, too smart and too powerful to ever have been intimidated by anyone.

James had always believed his father had been born a tough, war-hardened hero. But now, looking at his watery green eyes as he stared down at the feather that was a reminder of his childhood, James saw the truth. He could almost see the ghost of the boy Harry Potter had once been – a skinny little child with messy hair and broken glasses, a boy still mourning the death of his beloved pet, twenty-five years after the fact.

His dad had never been more human to him in that moment. James had always been afraid of what might happen if he ever took his dad down off the pedestal he held him on, but sitting at the kitchen table with him then, he realised that it wasn't a bad thing at all.

His dad was just a man, the same as any other, who had done some amazing things. He was somebody real, not just a legend to worship.

"Dad," James said, taking his free hand firmly in his own. His father raised his gaze, meeting James's eyes. He showed no surprise about seeing the uncharacteristic seriousness in his son's expression. "I love you."

This time, when Harry Potter smiled, it was the smile of the man who had fixed James's bleeding knees over the kitchen sink, and taught him how to fly, and gave him his invisibility cloak with a grin and a wink and a 'just in case'.

It was the smile of the man who kissed James's mother in order to shut her up when she started yelling, and coached Al in summoning a patronus, and let Lily singe his eyebrows off so that she could win their tournament of exploding snap.

"I love you too, son," his father said. "Always."

Only then did James realise the truth. Harry Potter had never been a mythical figure for him to idolize like the rest of his friends. He'd been nothing but Dad all along. And somehow, that was so much better.


I wanted James to be the quintessential kid who's dad was his absolute hero, but in this case, he was also the hero of the rest of the world, so there was added pressure. I liked the idea of him coming to realise that the reasons he worshipped his father were completely different to the reasons everyone else did.

Molly next!

PJ

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