Broken Wings, Jagged Talons
Harry / James Sirius
For Kamerreon, who wanted the above characters with the word 'Squib'
No one ever mentioned it in the Potter household. They knew better. After all, it stands to reason that the most powerful wizard in several generations doesn't want to be reminded that his firstborn is unable to even see the magic that his father is revered for possessing.
Even in the dead of night, amid tears wept in absolute silence by a boy who would never be able to perform a Silencing Charm, there was no one who had the strength to give voice to the demon that had plagued Harry Potter since James' fifth birthday, when three of Britain's top paediatric Healers, one after the other, had nervously stuttered out that there was no trace of a magical core in James Sirius Potter, that the child of one of the most gifted fliers in a century would never be able to even sit on a broom.
The swirl of activity that had filled the subsequent ten years were all a blur for the Potters, a never-ending parade of visits to the most powerful and knowledgeable Healers and academics in the world. Finally, it was in a tiny hut in the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, in one of the most beautiful parts of India, that a wizened old woman gently told Harry and Sirius the truth of the matter, that James' core had simply been drained away by another's greater need, that what once was taken cannot now be given back. Quite simply, she said, not even magic can protect us from having to face the consequences of our actions, conscious or not.
It was after that, James realized, that his father had stopped smiling, had lost hope and joy and faith in the world he had fought so hard to save. Looking at pictures taken just after his birth, he saw the disbelieving happiness in his father's face as he held James and knew that, at some level, his father had known that this could not last.
So, when people pitied him and whispered behind their hands, thinking that simply because he couldn't sense magic, his hearing was somehow defective as well, he wanted to scream at them to stop, that they were hurting his father so. Even his mother and siblings went out of their way to coddle him whenever they remembered the silent boy in a world dominated by sound, as though by doing so he would somehow overlook the fact that he lived in a household of some of the most magically powerful people of their time, a cripple in the presence of Olympians. They never seemed to see the shadows under his father's eyes growing darker, the hollows in his cheeks, deeper. Of course, his father's glamours were far more powerful than any other wizard's. They were never there when James wanted to rend them apart for so thoughtlessly performing miracles that James could only gape at.
Most of all, he loved his father, for doing this for him. Most of all, he hated his father, for doing this to him.
No one, other than his firstborn son, ever realized that the reason Harry Potter could never bear to so much as look James in the eye was that Harry had, somehow disrupting the magic governing time, taken the magic that his son would have borne in the future away from him, that his Squib son was the source of his phenomenal power.
Only James knew that it was because his father loved him so much, he hated himself for stealing the world he lived in from his son. Only James knew it was because his father could not bear to see it again, the twisted love and hatred that warped him into drawing Harry into his room at night and pounding into him, until he could, for that day, at least, find a release for his rage deep inside Harry's bleeding, broken body.