Hello everybody! I had to take a long time off because of both mental health and university, so I hope you're excited to see this new chapter finally uploaded! Now that I have my degree and a job and my brain kind of sorted out, I hope to come back on a more regular basis. I won't promise anything because we all know that every time I promised something life happened and it didn't work out. So, let's all hope for the best.

Until then – enjoy the chapter :D

Realisations

"You're totally exhausted," she said, wide eyes on the deep orange light his body had started to emit.

"Oh, really. I wouldn't have guessed," Harry deadpanned and scowled at his girlfriend.

"Stop rolling your eyes at me, Harry, you know that's not what I meant!" Hermione clicked her tongue disapprovingly as she gently helped him stand up and motioned him to grab onto her arm, moving to apparate them back home.

"I meant your magical core. It is nearly completely depleted."

*~*HP*~*

Lily fumed as she tried to stand as calmly as she possibly could in the sparkling clean kitchen of her sister. Her back was as straight as it could be without breaking in half, her arms were trembling slightly at the force with which she clenched her fists together and her eyes were narrowed into slits. She had long since given up on controlling her laboured breathing as that would both turn her attention off of the subject at hand and was a painful matter as her lungs just would not have it.

As James came into the kitchen, wand in his right hand, his left clenched into a fist as well, Lily felt some of the sheer power of her emotions that threatened to overwhelm her get back under control. He was like her haven for her, like the literal rock she could hang onto to keep herself from being swept away in the waves of emotions and pain.

Petunia's eyes, Lily noticed with quite a lot of satisfaction, were bulging dramatically out of their sockets, giving her the look of a fantastic beast of some sort. Her otherwise perfectly straight hair had taken on to the sudden magic in the room and was starting to frizz slightly. She had never seen her sister with frizzy hair, so her sight cheered her up slightly. She knew that her older sister would rather chop off her left hand than leave the house looking like Lily, whose hair turned rather unruly when she was angry or upset.

They had never known why, and to be honest Lily had never really bothered to know, until her Hogwarts letter had arrived on her eleventh birthday, giving her the explanation her parents had wondered over ever since her first temper tantrum.

The blonde woman's mouth kept moving, desperately trying to explain herself, but seeing as James had charmed away her voice she was having a hard time doing so.

Her green eyes narrowed even more as she saw none other than her brother-in-law come into the kitchen, metres behind James, awfully pale and very sweaty. Lily had always thought him to be a disgusting human being, even before he had married her sister, but now, with all of the first-hand knowledge that she had on her son's childhood, she couldn't bring herself to even think one positive thing about that monster.

"You're lucky that we haven't hexed you yet." The usual mischievously sparkling eyes of the Animagus were cold and unforgiving. "No," James continued as the Dursleys gestured wildly, "that is a charm. Believe me; you'd know if I had hexed you."

Vernon's eyes bulged put of their sockets at that statement.

"You are probably wondering why we are here," he smirked as he saw them nodding quickly, afraid that he might do something if they didn't answer right away. "The how isn't i isn't important, the why is though and I'm very positive that you already know the answer to that."

He couldn't say that he didn't enjoy this little psychological torture session they got going on right now. If it were going after how both Lily and he himself felt, the Dursleys wouldn't know what was coming for them, but they didn't want to situate themselves on the same level as Death Eaters, torturing Muggles for fun. Not that they would actually torture them, no, but transforming them into a bag of crisps and sweets, waiting for their son, who was probably hiding somewhere, to eat them would on the one hand satisfy his urge for revenge but on the other hand be far too drastic and barbaric a choice to make.

Now, a pair of horns on the head or hooves for feet... that would be quite entertaining to watch.

But before he could think of the proper incantation, his wife's voice, quiet and laced with so much pain that he immediately forgot all about his revenge plan, echoed through the tiled room.

"Why, Petunia? Why did you do that to our son? To a baby nonetheless? Tell me."

James' hand twitched, releasing the silencing charm and thus taking away the only excuse the Dursleys might have had to not answer the question.

"What else were we supposed to do, Lily?" Petunia's voice was pitched, as mixture of exaggeration and fear lacing into it.

"Treating him like your own!" Lily yelled, her cheeks red, the rest of her face sickly pale. "He had just lost his parents, Tuney! He had just survived an attack leaving him an orphan and all you did was shun him, lock him away and treat him like a slave!"

"We have tried to make him normal!" Petunia yelled back, angry tears in her eyes. "We have tried to get it out of him, but he just got more abnormal the longer he was here. We couldn't have him infect Dudley or be the reason that Dudders got treated differently because of that freak!"

"You know very well that you cannot control magic that way! You of all people should know!" Tears were streaming down the redhead's face, leaving behind wet marks on her pale skin.

"What do you mean by that?" Vernon, who they had all but forgotten about, yelled, his face turning into an ugly shade of puce. "What is she talking about?" he turned to his wife, whose face was deathly pale and completely emotionless. Her thin and long fingers betrayed her, though, as they gripped onto the shiny table top, knuckles turning white.

"She has sent the headmaster of Hogwarts a letter asking him whether she could go to school with me." Lily looked at Petunia in disgust. "He told you that there was no way to control who has enough magical energy in their core to turn them into a witch or wizard. And yet you decided to severely mistreat my son to make him normal?"

"You hated him because he had what you didn't have, didn't you?" James asked while keeping a watchful eye on the trembling Vernon Dursley, who couldn't believe what he was hearing. "So you made sure he would never know what love was, or safety, or comfort. You encouraged your son to make sure he wouldn't have any friends, so no-one would find out about what he could so, didn't you? You purposefully mistreated our son for something he had no control over."

He scoffed. "You are lucky that he's as powerful as he is. It's a miracle that he still had so much self-control to keep his accidental magic in check and to not just let his emotions take over because that could have had severe consequences for you and only you."

"He cared about you, you know that?" Lily took a few steps forward, ignoring Vernon's twitching, and came to a halt directly in front of her sister. "He cared about you despite your mistreatment. You never deserved to know him."

"Well, that was your fault, now wasn't it?"

James and Lily's head turned to their left so quickly that James felt his neck crack. "Excuse me?"

Vernon pushed himself to his full height, which wasn't that impressive of a move as he still only reached to James' shoulders, and swell into a nearly perfectly formed ball with extremities and a purple head, no neck. "You abandoned him after all. We took him in after he spent the night outside on our door step like a dog. We gave him shelter, food and clothes. We didn't need to do that, but we did and this is how you thank us? I wouldn't have cared if he had landed in an orphanage. That way, Dudley wouldn't have had to deal with him on a daily basis, letting that little creep ruin Dudley's perfectly normal childhood. But did we send him away? Oh no, we did not. We kept him here and he ruined our lives in return."

The air started to crackle all of a sudden. A hot wind washed through the kitchen, cupboards creaked, threatening to get pulled off the walls and red sparks flew out of James' wand that he was still holding onto as Lily's hair started to frizz heavily and dance in the air. A blast of energy hit Vernon straight in the chest, pushing him backwards into the sharp edges of the working surface, making him grunt in pain. Petunia let out a blood-curling scream as she rushed to her husband's side, frightened eyes never leaving her sister, who was seeing red.

How dare he say things like that? How dare he tell her that them abusing her baby was her fault? That she was the reason that sweet Harry still had to fight to live a normal life, a life that he shouldn't have to fight for.

James stopped breathing as he felt the magic in the air. His eyes focused on his furious wife who was slowly losing control.

"Lily," he tried to keep his voice steady and devoid of the fear and anger he could still feel pulsing strongly through his veins. "Lily! Lily, look at me. You have to calm down, love!"

But the red-haired witch didn't take any notice of him as the energy in the air concentrated itself around Vernon and started attacking him.

James jumped in front of her, his wand tucked away in his right back pocket. His hands shot up and grabbed both sides of her face, forcing her to look at him.

"Honey, you have to stop. You've lost control. Please, focus on me, love. Focus on my voice," he was talking in a hushed tone, only for her ears to hear. "You don't want to hurt them. I know you don't. This isn't you, Lils. Please stop. Harry wouldn't want you to do this to them, even if they deserve it."

The mention of her baby boy caused her to blink. She could feel the magic flow out of her body, totally out of control. It scared her. The last time she had lost control like that was in her second year at Hogwarts when a certain boy had tried to kiss her; the exact same boy who was now delicately holding her face in between his warm palms, talking to her softly. She blinked again, focussing on his gentle voice as it reached her ears.

"That's it, Lils. Harry wouldn't want you to lose it like that. I know they are horrible people and probably deserve what your magic wants to do to them, but this isn't the right thing to do. Control it, love, and we will think of a way to make them regret what they have done, okay?"

Taking a deep breath, Lily felt all of the energy that had just overwhelmed her leave her body, leaving her feeling empty and exhausted. Her eyes jumped to her sister who stared back at her with so much fear that Lily recoiled automatically.

What had she just done? How could she allow herself to lose control like that? The things that could have happened if James hadn't managed to get through to her... She couldn't even think about that; about what consequences that single moment of weakness could have caused – that single moment in which she had not had full control of her emotions, letting them unleash the pure magical force that-

Magical force?

She blinked, taken aback.

What magical force? She should not have any magical energy left in her core. All of her and James' magic was used to fight the pull of the power her death place had over her. They had needed some of Harry's core energy even in order to break that powerful bond. Her core is depleted and would probably stay that way, just as James' was exhausted as well.

James' core?

She turned back to her husband, who was watching her worriedly.

He had been able to use magic just now as well, but why? Why could they use magic if their cores didn't harbour any anymore? They hadn't even had enough energy to keep her with Harry, even in ghost –

Lily froze. No. No, this couldn't be true, could it?

Harry!

A shiver went through her body. She could feel it running through her very bones as her hands began to shake uncontrollably and her body started to sway slightly. Strong hands grabbed her shoulders. She could hear James' voice shouting aat her, but all she could do was slowly shake her head, not able to fully comprehend what they had done to their only son. Unknowingly, but still.

Fear gripped her and she could see an unconscious Harry before her very eyes. It was too much. This was too much for her body and mind to handle. White spots danced across her vision, but she refused to just give in.

"James," she gasped as she was finally able to put her jumbled thoughts into words. The whispered word caused her husband to nearly choke as he stopped speaking abruptly.

"James, we need to get back! We need to get back to Harry!"

*~*HP*~*

Harry's stomach dropped to somewhere in between his knees and the ground. "W-What do you mean, my magical core is nearly completely depleted?"

They were back at Grimmauld Place. Hermione had apparated them directly into the living room to drop Harry off on the couch and turned to get the fire going.

The situation was tense. Harry didn't know what was going on and Hermione was having difficulties explaining what was happening to him; probably because she, herself, didn't exactly know either.

"Do you think it's a late consequence from the war?" Harry asked, finally relenting to being pushed into the couch's cushions. "Do you think the curse he shot at me caused more damage than originally thought?"

Hermione rubbed her hands over her face and let herself sank down next to the sofa, looking at the carpet covering the old wooden floor. "No, that can't be it," she said, shaking her head slowly. "It can't be. I did all the tests myself and they were more than clear that your core didn't take any damage whatsoever from getting hit by the Killing Curse."

She sighed and finally faced him.

"What is it then?" Harry gently pushed Hermione's hands out of the way as he tried to sit up. "I feel fine now," he hurried to add as the young witch opened her mouth to reprimand him.

"Well, did this happen before? Did you experience anything that was even remotely comparable to what you have been experiencing throughout today?"

Harry scratched his head. "No," he said honestly, shrugging. "It never happened before. The first time it did happen was this morning and, as I said earlier, it wasn't as bad as just now. It happened two times this morning and then once right after lunch..."

Frowning, Hermione slowly stood up and started walking through the room. Harry watched her keenly. "Okay. It never happened before today. You didn't do anything differently than all that time before." Raising her brows, she turned towards Harry to wait for his confirmation, which she got in form of a quick affirmative nod.

"Good," she resumed her slow walk in front of the burning fire, "that means that something must have happened today that was out of the ordinary; something that is somehow linked to either you directly or your magical core."

Harry didn't have time to answer as a load plop made them jump and pull out their wands. A wave of dizziness caused Harry to once again lose his balance and collapse on the floor, just as the door to the living room burst open and revealed a disheveled looking James and Lily Potter, both of whom started to talk at the same time, completely overwhelming Hermione. A loud shout coming from Lily caused James to pause and see the second person in the room who was trying to pull himself onto the couch, trembling all over.

"Harry!"

Both Potters hurried to their son's side to help him onto the sofa. Once he was comfortable and able to fully see and hear whatever was happening around him, Lily looked from her son to her husband to Hermione and exclaimed, tears welling up in her eyes, "we know what's happening and it's our fault!"

There's always a drawback...

I hope you liked it!

Until next time - see ya! :D