[A/N: Get ready, everyone, this chapter's a big un. Plot wise, as well as word count. I'd love to hear what you think of it. Thanks for reading, and stay safe.]
"Congratulations, Hermione! That is just wonderful news," Lily said, giving Hermione a hug as Harry and Ginny joined the others in the kitchen.
"What's happening?" Ginny asked.
"Hermione got the job at the Ministry in the Magical Creatures department. That's why we were late. Kingsley let us know last night that she had her final interview this morning." Ron explained, beaming with pride.
"Oh Hermione, that's amazing!" Ginny ran at the older girl and tackled her in a hug.
"I never doubted it. Hermione can do anything she puts her mind to, and Merlin help anyone who stands in her way." Harry helped her to her feet, and gave her a brotherly side hug. "They're lucky to have you, Hermione. I should know."
She chuckled, and gave him a real hug. "I have you boys to thank. If you hadn't supported me and S.P.E.W. all those years ago, I might have lost my nerve."
Ron waved his hand dismissively. "Hermione, the hat didn't put you in Gryffindor on a whim. Harry's right. If we hadn't joined Spew, we wouldn't have lived to see fifth year. It was just self-defense, darling!" Hermione glared at him.
"If I wasn't in such a good mood, you'd be in a whole lot of trouble right now. Harry, I'm so sorry we're late." Hermione took a seat at the kitchen table, and the rest of them joined her.
"Stop, Hermione, don't even worry about it." Harry waved her off.
"Where'd you leave off?" She asked, digging into the delectable curry that James had made them for lunch.
"End of your fifth year," Ginny replied between bites.
"Oh Merlin, bet that was fun," muttered Ron.
Harry snorted. James smirked, and asked, "I was thinking, you mentioned Neville Longbottom, how are his parents? They were in the Order with us. Lovely people, wicked fighters."
You could have heard a pin drop. The younger people all avoided his curious glance, and finally it was Ginny who responded. "The Lestranges tortured them to the point of insanity not long after Voldemort attacked your house. They're still alive, but they're gone. They've been at St. Mungo's ever since, and Neville grew up with his grandmother."
Both Lily and James stopped eating, listening open mouthed. Lily dabbed at her eyes with her napkin, and remarked, "No one got out unscathed, did they?" Ginny shook her head sadly.
Harry laughed darkly. "It seems like the only ones who made it out of the first war unscathed were the Death Eaters. We're still trying to track down some of the same motherfuckers that you fought back then."
James looked at him, tired. "What about Peter?"
Harry played with the rice on his plate. "Dead. He was supposed to strangle me, and hesitated. Voldemort strangled him with his own hand. I suppose I should be grateful, but mostly I'm just glad that he's dead." James nodded, solemnly. Lily took his hand.
The table was silent. Harry pushed back from the table. "I think I'm done. Lunch was great, dad, thank you so much. I'll see you guys back in there."
When he left, Lily turned to the others. "It just sickens me to see him like this. We were fighting so that our kids would never have to face the things that we did. And it was all for nothing. My poor brave boy." She turned to look away from the group as a single tear escaped. "Why did he even choose Harry to begin with? Why not Neville?"
"As far as we can tell," Hermione answered quietly. "It had something to do with him being half-blood. Voldemort was, too. That, and he was born the day after Neville, if you choose to interpret the prophecy extremely literally."
Lily heaved a sigh. "Anyone else care for a cup of tea before we go back?" The girls smiled and nodded. Lily bustled over to the stove. James was lost in thought, totally ignoring the others.
"Wait, you've heard the prophecy?" Ginny asked, confused.
"Not word for word, but Harry gave us the important highlights after Dumbledore showed it to him." Ron replied, who had finished his own plate and was eyeing Hermione's.
"Did you know he's got it memorized?" Ginny shot back. Hermione's face scrunched in confusion, and she handed Ron her plate without looking at him.
"No, I thought he'd only heard it once. Harry's not really the 'memorization' type," Hermione replied.
Ginny scrubbed her face with her hands. "I'm thinking of taking him to see Dr. Albright tomorrow. This has been hard on him. And I think he still has some old problems to work out."
"Therapy is a life-long journey, Ginny. And Harry has a lot that went unaddressed for far too long. I thought he was still going regularly?" Hermione interrogated.
Ginny sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "I think he stopped while I was at Harpies training. Both he and the apartment were a wreck when I got back."
"Here you go, dears." Lily served the younger women tea with a kind smile.
"Thank you, Mrs. Potter. We'd better go join Harry."
When everyone was settled once more, Harry started talking quickly, anxious to get past some of the worst memories he had.
"Sixth year was both better, and worse, in its own way. That's when Ginny and I started dating, which was definitely a high point. I guess Dumbledore finally ran out of other options, because Snape finally got to be the Defense teacher, and Dumbledore brought back Slughorn to teach Potions."
James laughed heartily, and Lily groaned. "Oh God, not him!" The younger couples laughed.
"He never shut up about how much he loved you in class, does the feeling not go both ways?" Ron asked, snickering.
"Not quite. He never shut up about her during our classes either. Poor Lily's had about all she can take of old Sluggy." James rubbed her back as Lily shook her head, embarrassed.
"Well, we've got that in common. Dumbledore started teaching me on the side about Voldemort's background, so I could understand better how to defeat him. It turns out that Voldemort had made a bunch of Horcruxes. Seven, to be exact. The diary Ginny was possessed by was a horcrux, in fact."
"Hold on a second," James interrupted. "What is a Horcrux?"
Hermione cleared her throat. "A Horcrux is an object in which a wizard has hidden a fragment of his or her soul in order to become immortal. They can only be created after deliberately committing murder, which fractures your soul. The user then binds that fractured bit of soul to an object…or living being, and if the user dies, that part of their soul can be resurrected. It is supremely horrible magic, relegated to antiquity for a good reason."
Lily and James sat back in their seats. Harry took a sip of water for his suddenly dry mouth, and continued.
"In order to kill Voldemort, I had to destroy all the Horcruxes first, so that he couldn't be resurrected from one of them. All we knew for sure at that point was the diary, and a ring that Dumbledore had already destroyed. But Dumbledore suspected there were more, from his research."
"No wonder he was so evil, the man didn't even have a full soul." Lily whispered.
"No," Ginny said evenly. "He didn't have a full soul because he was evil. He chose to become what he was, but the evil was rooted in his heart from the beginning." They were all silent. Harry was just leaned his head on hers, and she closed her eyes.
"He took me on a trip to get another suspected horcrux, Slytherin's locket. It was a very dangerous mission, and Dumbledore was weakened. We got it, though. When we got back to Hogwarts, the dark mark was over one of the towers. All year, I knew that snake, Malfoy, was up to something, and I was right. Draco Malfoy was there with a horde of Death Eaters, ordered by Voldemort to kill Dumbledore, but he couldn't so it. So Snape did." A single tear finally skipped down Harry's face, and he let out a gasp of air.
"Of course, it turned out to be a fake locket, so it was all for nothing." Harry swiped at his face, determined to keep going. "But by then I was so close that I could taste it. Dumbledore had given me all the tools, I just had to find the Horcruxes and destroy them."
"Harry…" Lily had finally regained her voice. "Surely there was someone else who could have done it. That's far too much to put on one person."
Harry shook his head sadly, but didn't respond. "I don't know if you've noticed yet, Mrs. Potter, but your son has something of a martyr complex," Ron joked with misty eyes.
Harry let out a watery chuckle, and composed himself. "Ron, Hermione, and I didn't come back to Hogwarts the next year. We traveled all over, tracking down Horcruxes. The next year was probably the worst of my life. I don't really…I can't really talk about it. I'm not really ready yet." His parents nodded.
"But I did do it. I tracked them all down. It all came down to a big battle, at Hogwarts. It was…beyond awful. We lost so many people. So many great people." Harry was now crying in earnest. "Remus died in the Battle at Hogwarts. Both he and his wife. I'm so sorry."
Lily broke down. "Poor Remus…our dear, kind, wonderful Remus."
"He was married?" James asked, hiccuping through his own tears.
Harry nodded, trying his best to pull it back together. "He was, about a year before. Her name was Tonks, Nymphadora Tonks. She was an auror." James laughed sharply, heartbroken.
"I know Tonks, she's Sirius' little cousin! She's a great girl, but Godric, how we would have teased him for that." He leaned heavily on the arm of the sofa. "Did he get to be happy with her, Harry?"
Harry smiled weakly. "They were so in love, but he was always worried about hurting her and the baby. But I think they were."
"The baby?" Lily asked hopefully.
"They have a son. His name is Teddy. I'm his godfather." Harry grinned, thinking of the little boy, who just recently had said his name for the first time.
"That's just incredible." James' wide grin wavered slightly. "Moony always said in school that he'd never marry. He never wanted to risk giving his furry little problem to his kids. I'm so glad he got to be a dad, because I've never known a man that I thought would be a better dad than Remus." James cleared his throat, wiping his face clean. "Go on, Harry. Sorry for the detour."
"Not at all, dad. I always have time to talk about Remus, if you ever need to," Harry responded softly.
He grabbed a tissue, and passed the box around. "Right. So, we'd destroyed them all, except for his snake. There was one thing I didn't account for, though. Right at the end, I learned that Voldemort made a Horcrux that even he didn't know about." Harry hesitated, taking another sip of water. His knee jiggled up and down.
He finally looked up, first at his father, then at his mother. "It was me. I was the horcrux. I had to let him kill me. And he did."
Lily completely broke down at that point, collapsing onto her husband. Harry crossed the room, and sat between his parents. They enveloped him in a hug, and they stayed like that for a while.
"Well, out with it," James said eventually, trying in vain to be tough. "You're here now, so that's obviously not the end of the story."
Harry laughed shakily. "Wish I had a better explanation. I went to a sort of purgatory, and Dumbledore asked me if I wanted to come back, and I did. I came back. He had actually destroyed his own horcrux inside of me. Killing him was…actually a bit of a coincidence, to be honest."
Lily laughed. "I don't think one just 'coincidentally' kills Voldemort, Harry."
Harry chuckled. "Not a coincidence, I guess. More a happy accident. While tracking the horcruxes down, we also ended up tracking down the Deathly Hallows, the artifacts mentioned in the Tale of the Three Brothers. I already had the cloak."
"My dad was…right?" James whispered in disbelief.
"Yeah. Our ancestor, Ignotus Peverell, got it from Death himself."
"I can't believe it…James told me that story on our first date, and I thought he was just trying to impress me to get in my pants." Lily shook her head.
"I was!" James chuckled. "I sure wish my dad was here to hear that."
Harry took his father's hand and squeezed. James patted Harry's hand with his free one. "Dumbledore left me the resurrection stone in his will. Voldemort had the elder wand, but by a mere fluke, was not its master. Dumbledore had been its master for many years, and Draco disarmed him, becoming the master, and then I disarmed Draco sometime after that. I was the master of the wand. So when Voldemort tried to use it on me…it turned on him."
James shook his head in disbelief, and gripped Harry's hand in his own. "It's funny…we tried so hard to protect you, but you ended up protecting us. My son…killed Voldemort. And I wasn't even there to see it!" He laughed at his own joke, but his overly bright eyes gave away the true grief behind the smile.
Lily took Harry's other hand. The tears flew down her face swiftly, and all she could say, over and over, was "I'm sorry, Harry. I'm so sorry." Harry watched her for a moment, memorizing her face, before pulling her into a hug.
"No, Mum, you have nothing to apologize for. You did what you thought was right." James got up and wrapped his arms around them both, and they all stayed like that for a long moment.
"Harry, I know it's hard to go through reliving the worst parts of your life, but I really appreciate that we heard it from you. This was a gift you gave us." James said when they pulled apart.
Harry laughed nervously. "Well, it does help to say it out loud. It's getting easier, the more time that passes. What's really helpful is getting validation that I'm not crazy, that it really was as bad as it felt at the time. Most people read a totally made up version of events in the paper, so they usually hated me for something that I hadn't actually done."
"That's horrible for a child to go through," Lily shook her head in disappointment, and stroked his hair. "That kind of thing can completely skew your idea of yourself and undermine your self esteem."
"You know, Harry, their version of events doesn't have to be the only one on the market. I think it could be quite healing to take control of your narrative. Find a way to tell your real story." James patted Harry on the leg. "It helped my dad a whole lot, anyway."
Harry perked up. "Your dad? I don't know anything about your dad. What happened to him?"
James grinned. "My old man was a potions master. A potion inventor, really. Before I was born, he invented a really successful one. Sleekeazy's Hair potion." Hermione sat bolt upright.
"He invented Sleekeazy? I use that almost every single day! His name isn't anywhere on the bottle, I had no idea!"
"Well, he sold the company just after I was born. He and Mum were pretty old when I was born, and there were a lot of rumors, especially in the Prophet, that they'd either bought me or stole me. The other members of the Board offered to buy him out, so that their sales wouldn't be affected by the negative press. He bought a full page ad in the Prophet the next day and told the truth, and printed the proprietary recipe for Sleekeazy."
Hermione was rapt. "But surely they could have sued him over that?"
"They never did." James shrugged. "I think they knew they had it coming."
Harry was silent, considering.
Harry flopped gratefully onto their bed later that night, fully clothed. He sighed and closed his eyes. Something began tugging on his foot.
"What are you doing, Ginny?" He muttered, not opening his eyes.
"You stay there, I'm just going to take off your shoes, at least. I'm not waking up tomorrow covered in bruises because you're too exhausted to take off your shoes." He groaned and sat up.
"No, let me do it."
"No, lay down. You're had a very long day, just let me help you." She slapped his hands away.
"You need your rest too, you're pregnant. I'll just get up and change, I don't want you worrying about me all night." Her hands stilled. A tear skittered down her face.
"Ginny?" He forgot his shoe and slid down to sit next to her. "Ginny, what's wrong?"
"No, you need to sleep." She blubbered, as another tear gave her away. Her whole body shook with the effort of holding back the tidal wave of emotion. It wouldn't hold much longer.
"Stop, Gin, you're obviously hurting, and we need to talk about this. What's been going on?"
She gasped, desperately trying to breathe, to put everything back to normal.
"I can't - I can't say it. Please don't make me say it." She shuddered. He held her to him, heartbroken.
What could have so thoroughly broken the spirit of the woman he loved? There was only one thing he could think of, but speaking it out loud scared him as well. As if saying it meant that it would never happen again. A cry ripped through the air, shredding the cool early autumn breeze. It was a few tattered heaves later that Harry realized - it had come from him. He was crumpled in a heap on the floor next to the bed, head in Ginny's lap. She stroked his hair, tears streaming down her face.
"He's…" Harry choked out, wounded. Could the black hole that was his heart never be satisfied?
"He's gone." She whispered, and slid down to join him on the floor. They melted together, one screaming, mourning animal. He, mourning for the first time. She, mourning at last.