"Harry?"
Harry looked up from his task to see Ginny, long red hair falling over her shoulder, a little grimace of apology twisting her lips. He blinked at her, then down at the bundle in her arms. She was nursing their small son, whose little fist kept tapping her breast. "What is it?" he asked. "Do you need that cream."
"No," she said, "just a pillow."
Harry got her too, turning one into the shape of a half donut so she could settle their hungry, squirmy son on top of it. The other, he tucked behind her back. He lingered there a moment, fingers brushing up her spine and to the nape of her neck. It was a private moment between just the three of them, and not something Harry was yet used to. He set his chin on her shoulder, lightly, and watched James, his fist pumping, have his last meal before they settled him in his cot for the night.
James was, it had to be said, a fairly even mix of the two of them. He had Harry's thin face and Ginny's complexion; the shape of his lips came for Harry, while the ears were exactly Ginny. The sparse hair on his head was a reddish brown that mixed their two colors. But his eyes — and Harry marveled at this, still, two months after he said good morning to James Sirius for the first time — were a bright hazel that came from James Potter.
It was this thought that caught at Harry when James opened his eyes and looked at him, and it sent him back to where he'd been sitting before, sorting the photographs he and Ginny had salvaged from the wreckage of the cottage in Godric's Hollow. It was something they'd done right after their wedding a couple of years before, but it was not a task he could do every day. Instead, he picked quiet, weekend days like this, when the rain poured outside, and Ginny was present.
It was a bit painful to sort through the memories his parents chose to keep. Harry cast another look at James, who was now leaning away, a tiny big of milk clinging to his lips, looking near drunk from his mother's milk. A couple of weeks ago, Harry had come across a picture of himself looking quite the same.
He shuffled a few. Here, he was over a year old and riding his baby broomstick over grass, face lit with excitement. "How soon is too soon to get him his own practice broom?" he asked Ginny.
She scrunched up her face and looked at him. James was shifted to the other breast. "We could go get him one tomorrow," she said, finally. "Make sure he's got off to a good start."
Harry chuckled. They'd buy him one for his first birthday, if Ron didn't insist on being the one to do so.
Here were his parents in dress-robes and wide smiles, no sign of Harry. James twirled Lily, and the two of them looked delighted to be with each other. Another of just the two of them... but Harry was there in the form of a small bump that both his parents were cradling. Sirius was in this one, pointing at the belly with an expression akin to shock. Then, when James swatted him, his face relaxed into a smile and he stumbled away, holding up his hands in surrender.
It was always a bit of an ache to stumble into the past. These happy people were all gone; Harry was the only one to carry on their legacy. He glanced at Ginny and James, again, feeling fairly swollen with tenderness. It was quite a thing, to know he loved Ginny and James as much as James had loved Lily and Harry.
He had almost decided to put the pictures away, to settle next to his family and enjoy the few minutes left before they tucked James into his cot. But it was the next picture that caught his attention instead — baby Harry with his two parents — all wearing matching Christmas sweaters, the way the Weasleys still did.
A sigh escaped him and he held it up to the light. Their sweaters did not quite match. James's had "Papa Deer" on it and a running stag. Prongs . Harry blinked rather rapidly. Lily's said "Mama Deer", and even Harry's tiny sweater read "Baby Deer".
"Ginny," he said thickly, not caring that tears had blurred his eyes. "Ginny, look!"
"What is it—oh!"
Harry had plopped down beside her and shown her the photograph of the two grinning parents with their baby waving his fists between them. They stared at it together, then at each other. He thought her eyes might be a little misty, too, which surprised him.
"We are going to have to do something like it!" she said in a hushed, excited voice. "The three of us!"
"I don't know if the deer stuff works for us..."
"We'll figure something out," she said with confidence. "But it's too perfect... we have to do it, Harry."
In the end, Harry agreed, and laid his arm around his wife and looked at his son, and silently, as he did every so often, thanked his parents for the gift of his life.