Author's Note: Here's Chapter Three; it's James's last night at home. Stay tuned for the fourth and final chapter, "The Hogwarts Express." And, as ever, I love feedback.

Evening at Potter Place

James's Portkey trip ended just in front of the entrance to Gringotts; this time, he managed to land on his feet. The guard goblin didn't seem overly impressed by this show of dexterity. "Mr. Potter?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Very good." The goblin checked James's name off a list and held out his long-fingered hand. James handed over the used Portkey, which the Goblin tossed into a box, and walked into Gringotts.

Griphook was waiting for him. "Excellent timing, Mr. Potter. We close in less than fifteen minutes. Shall I retrieve your things for you, or would you like to come along?"

"I'll come along," James said. Griphook nodded as though he had expected this, and he led James through the door and called for a cart. James savoured the wild ride to the vault. Griphook opened the vault and magicked James's packages into the cart. They rode back, and Griphook sent him on his way.

James lugged his packages down the street and back to the brick wall that separated Diagon Alley from the Muggle world. Just a few hours ago, he reflected, he had needed someone else to let him into the Alley; now he had his own wand, and he could let himself out. He liked that. He counted the bricks carefully and placed his wand on the right one. The wall opened up just like it was supposed to do, and James walked through the opening and into the lot behind The Leaky Cauldron. He entered the pub through the back door, waved to Tom and Jarvis, who were busily serving the after-work crowd, and made his way over to the fireplace. He reached into a pocket of his robe, pulled out the pouch of Floo Powder that Mum had given him this morning, opened it, and tossed its contents into the fire. The flames turned emerald green and flared up higher than James's head. He quickly placed his parcels in the fire, put his glasses in his pocket, took a deep breath, and climbed into the fire. He tucked in his elbows and called, "Potter Place!"

He was whisked into the Floo network. He spun and spun, feeling a little queasy. As much as he liked the swooping, swerving ride the Gringotts cart, James didn't care for the spinning ride through the Floo system. Finally, he landed in a heap in one of his family's own fireplaces, this one in the library. He climbed out quickly, managing to get out before any of his packages landed on him. "Hullo!" he called. "I'm home!"

"In here, Jamie!" his mother called from the parlour. James carried his packages in, knowing that Mum would want to see his purchases. "Hello, dear. Did you have a good day?"

"Yes, very good. I found everything, and. . . ."

James was interrupted by a happy crow from his little brother. "Jamie!" The toddler scurried across the room to his big brother.

"Hi, Nick!" James picked up the boy and swung him high into the air; Nick laughed delightedly. "Did you have a good day?"

"Yeah!"

"What did you do?"

"Kidditch!" Nick, who had just turned two, was at what Mum called the "vocabulary word" stage of talking. He knew lots of words, but he hadn't really started to put them together into sentences yet.

"You played Quidditch? That sounds fun." James knew that Nick's favorite plaything was his toy broomstick, which let him hover about six inches off the ground. He swooped around the house on it, running into things and scaring the house elves.

"Yeah! Fun!"

"And what else did you do?"

"Story!"

"Mum read you a story?"

"No! Loopy!"

"Oh, Loopy read you a story." Nick nodded happily. Loopy was his favorite house elf, prized by the Potters for his literacy; most house elves weren't an education, but James's great-grandfather, the elves' original master, had his elves to learn to read. Loopy had been the only one to show any interest, though. "What else did you do?" James asked.

"Tea! Sammich! Shicken!" "Shicken" could mean either "kitchen" or "chicken"—Nick said the same thing for both words—so James wasn't sure if Nick meant that he had eaten chicken sandwiches for tea or that he had taken tea in the kitchen. He looked to Mum for help.

"Yes, we had chicken sandwiches for tea," she clarified, "and then Nick had a nap."

"Nap!" Nick agreed.

"And his fever has been gone all day; I think he's all better."

"All gone! All better!" the boy echoed.

"Sounds like you had a good day, Nick," James said. "Do you want to hear about my day?"

"Yeah!" the boy said. He sat down in his child-sized chair and fixed his blue eyes attentively on his brother.

James grinned inwardly. Nick was so cute. "Well, first I went to The Leaky Cauldron. Remember the Floo Powder that I used to make me disappear out of the fireplace? That's where it took me. And, then. . . " James recounted the events of his day for Mum and Nick, carefully editing anything that was likely either to confuse his brother or to upset Mum. She probably wouldn't be as calm about his Disarming Spell as Grandfather had been, nor was she likely to be happy about how openly Grandfather had talked to him. He showed them each set of purchases as he talked about the shop where he had gotten them. "And then I Flooed back from The Leaky Cauldron, and here I am," he finished.

"Sounds good. Did you hold on to your receipts?" Mum asked.

"Yeah, they're in the bags. Except for the wand one; that's in my pocket." He fished it out and handed it to her.

"Great; thanks," she said.

"Oh, and I brought Nick a T-R-E-A-T," James said quietly, spelling out the word that he didn't want his brother to hear. "It's a C-R-E-A-M C-A-K-E left over from tea with Grandfather; can I give it to him now, or should I wait until after dinner?"

"You'd better wa-. . ." Mum stopped, seeing the hopeful expression on Nick's face; he didn't know exactly what they were talking about, but he could tell that it was about him. "Oh, go ahead and give it to him."

James fished the cream cake from his pocket, unwrapped it, and handed it to his brother. "Here you go, Nick."

"Gooey!" Nick shouted. That was what he called his favorite treat. He ate it, very messily, while Mum and James watched in amusement.

When he had finished and Mum had done a quick Washing Charm on his face and hands, she suggested, "Why don't you two go play until dinner time? I need to find some information that your father wants when we talk to him tonight."

"Okay," James agreed. "Nick, you want to go ride my broom with me?"

"Yeah!" the boy shouted, nodding his head so hard that his blonde curls shook.

"Be careful, Jamie."

"I will, I will. I'll hold him very carefully, and I won't do any spirals or anything. Honestly!" James waited until Mum turned her back, and then he rolled his eyes and shook his head. Nick laughed. James scooped him up in one arm and headed for the stairs.

"James Matthew Potter!" his mother's voice made him stop short. "Are you planning to leave all of your things lying here in the middle of the floor?"

"Um. . . yes?" James said, trying to keep a straight face.

"Well, you need to revise those plans."

"Okay. Nick, you want to help me carry these up to my room? You can take that bag there," he said, pointing to the small bag that contained the treats for Sophia; he figured that one was small enough for Nick to handle. Nick picked up that bag, James picked up the rest, and the brothers headed for James's bedroom.

James lived in a large room on the fourth floor of the house, just under the attic. The room was oddly shaped, partly because of the way that the roof sloped down on this end of the house and partly because it had once been at least three different rooms. Over the years, walls had been removed so that, by the time James was born, it was all one room, filled with all kinds of unexpected nooks, and it took up nearly a third of the floor. It was currently a total mess. James was usually relatively neat, but yesterday his Exploding Snap deck had gone up with a particularly colossal bang ("Boom!" Nick had observed cheerfully, laughing as cards flew everywhere), and he had torn the room apart looking for the cards; every item that usually lived in a drawer, in a closet, or on a shelf had somehow ended up on the floor. Clothes, books, wizard jigsaw puzzles (much like the Muggle kind, except that the pieces changed shape, and the pictures didn't stay the same), his Quidditch gear—utter chaos. He had found all the cards but one (the Blue One-eyed Warlock), but he hadn't gotten around to tidying up yet. He figured he'd clean up as he packed. He and Nick set the parcels in on top of the rest of the mess and left it at that. James made a quick stop by Sophia's cage to stroke her sooty feathers. "Sorry, Soph, I don't have any food right now; I'll bring you up some scraps from dinner, okay?" She nipped his finger gently, which he took for assent. He looked around, located his broomstick under a pile of dirty laundry, and fished it out. James ordered the broom into the air and carefully placed his little brother on. "Hold on tight," he instructed. Nick grabbed the broom with both chubby fists. James climbed on behind him; he put one arm protectively around his brother and used the other to hold on and guide the broom. They flew through the doorway, down the hall, and down the stairs. "Mum, could you open the front door, please?" James called from the second-floor landing.

"How many times have I told you not to fly that thing in the house?" his mother called back.

"Hundreds. Please?"

His mother sighed, but James could see that she was smiling as she opened the front door. He kissed her on the cheek as he flew by, and she shut the door behind him. He flew around the grounds of Potter Place—over the front lawn, around the house, and along the walks of the back garden. He didn't fly very fast or very high—that would have worried Mum, who tended to look out the window at most inopportune times, like when he was in the middle of a dive—but he still enjoyed it, mostly because of how much fun Nick had. Even four feet off the ground seemed "Way up!" to Nick.

"Want to fly through the maze, Nick?" he asked.

"Yeah!" the toddler replied. So they did. Flying, James reflected, really was the way to go with the maze; with a broom, if you got lost and frustrated, you could just fly up and out. The maze re-arranged itself every few days, and sometimes James ran out of patience when it had adopted a particularly tricky configuration. Today, though, he and Nick made it through in record time; this pattern, he though, must have been easier than some.

When he could feel that Nick was getting tired of holding on, James landed and helped his brother off the broom. He set it aside, and the boys spent the rest of their outside time playing ball (Nick couldn't catch yet, but he could roll, and he had fun just running after it), catching fireflies, skipping rocks in the pool of goldfish, and running up and down the garden paths. The grounds of Potter Place were quite large, so the boys could run and shout and play without disturbing any neighbors.

James had just flown up to retrieve Nick's ball from where it had lodged in an apple tree when Mum called, "Time to come in, boys!" He set the ball beside the path where Nick could find it in the morning, set his brother back in front of him, and flew in the back door. He hopped off, helped Nick off, and hung the broom in its spot inside the door. He almost never hung it here, instead leaving it wherever was handy, which was usually in the middle of the floor. Today, though, he was careful to put it away properly, for he would be leaving it in its place until he came home for Christmas; first-years were not allowed to have their own broomsticks at Hogwarts. James wasn't too happy about this; he knew that there were school brooms to use, but they wouldn't be the same as his Cleansweep, which he knew and which knew him. Oh, well, he thought, it was a small sacrifice; there would be lots more at Hogwarts to make up for the temporary loss of his broomstick. Pulling himself out of his reverie, James hurried into the washroom; he didn't want to keep Mum and Nick waiting. He washed his hands, tried to straighten his hair, gave up, and went on in to dinner.

--

After dinner, Mum took Nick off for his bath ("Washy!"), and James went back up to his room to pack and to try to straighten the mess. Before tackling either task, he gave Sophia the fat from the pork chop that he had eaten for dinner; she hooted happily. He decided to let her out to fly around a bit while he packed.

He put most of his purchases from that afternoon directly into his trunk without bothering to open them again, but he left out his wand; he'd carry that with him tomorrow. He also made sure that one set of robes was at the top of the trunk; students were to travel to King's Cross dressed as Muggles and change into their robes on the train. James, who had been to King's Cross lots of times with Dad, privately thought that the robes would hardly have made a difference; any Muggles who were likely to notice something odd about the students would probably be tipped off by the owls and toads. In addition to the supplies that he had purchased today, James packed plenty of parchment—Mum had given him reams of the stuff for his birthday—his favorite quill plus a few spares, and several bottles of different-colored ink. He also added In the Air with the Appleby Arrows, the book about his favorite Quidditch team. He liked the Arrows partly just because they were good but partly because he didn't like the Wimbourne Wasps, their bitter rivals. James had to admit that Wimbourne's big star, Ludo Bagman, was the best Beater in the league, but he still didn't like him; there was something phony about Bagman, he thought. Besides, he didn't like wasps.

After packing up his trunk, James undertook what Daily Prophet headlines would have called "a massive clean-up effort." It took nearly an hour, but, when he finished, everything was back where it belonged—books and games on the shelves, clothes either hung, folded, or, in the case of the dirty ones, piled beside the fireplace for one of the house elves to collect, desk straightened, and so forth. He even made the bed, which he usually wouldn't have bothered to do since he was going to be sleeping in it again in less than two hours, but the room looked so neat that he couldn't bear to leave it undone. And he found the One-Eyed Warlock tangled in the bedclothes; he winked with his one eye as James but him back into the deck and closed it up tight in its explosion-proof box. He considered for a moment, the added the deck to his Hogwarts trunk; Exploding Snap would be a nice way to pass time on the train. He hadn't been planning to take his chess set to Hogwarts—he wasn't very good, after all, and he figured that someone else would have one if he wanted to play—but the pieces protested so loudly that he decided to pack them just to get them to shut up. Just as he was shutting Sophia back into her cage, the clock on his wall shouted, "Oi, Jamie! Yer 'bout to be late!"

"Oh, yeah, time for Dad! Thanks!" he called over his shoulder as he ran out the door and down the stairs to the second floor. Mum was just lighting the fire when he arrived in Dad's study.

"There you are, Jamie—sorry, James." He had told her at dinner about his planned name change. "I was just about to send Nicky up to get you. Dad's head should be here any minute now."

A few minutes later, there was a pop in the fireplace, and Nick pointed at it, shouting, "Daddy! Head!"

"Hi, Nicky!" Dad's head said from the fireplace. "Doesn't Daddy look funny?"

"Funny!" Nick agreed. As he toddled around to the side of the fireplace, apparently checking to see where the rest of his father might be, Will Potter greeted the rest of his family.

"Did you find everything you needed today, Jamie?" he asked his older son.

"Yes, with no problems. And I got to ride the Gringotts cart twice." James knew that, even though he tried to hide it behind what he called his "grown-up face," Dad liked the cart as much as he did. "And I had a really good time with Grandfather. He told me about my classmates and my teachers and. . . stuff."

"'And stuff,' eh?" Dad repeated. "What kind of 'stuff'?"

"Just, you know, about the Houses, and about making friends with people outside my House, and about being nice to the Muggle-borns." He smiled inwardly, remembering how Grandfather had called blood prejudice "that Slytherin rot," but he didn't repeat that; Dad probably would have thought it was funny, but Mum might not have. "Oh, and he said to ask you about the surprise. What's the surprise, Dad?"

Will Potter grinned. "Ellen," he said to his wife, "Over there in the big wardrobe, up on the top shelf and way in the back, there is a rather squishy package. Could you get it down and give it to Jamie?"

"Yes, love," Mum replied. "Oh, and he wants to be called 'James' now instead of 'Jamie,'" she called across the room to her husband's head as she opened the wardrobe.

"Is that so?" Dad asked, looking amused.

"Yeah," James said, feeling a little embarrassed. "Grandfather mentioned names today when we were talking, and I thought it might be time. 'Jamie' sounds a little. . . well, young, you know?"

"I know. I had the same talk with him before I went to Hogwarts," Dad said. "I had been 'Billy' when I was little, and he suggested that I think about, ah, choosing a more adult version of my name."

"Is this the package, Will?" Mum asked, carrying over a brown paper parcel.

"Yes, that's it." She handed it to James. "Son, in that package is a family heirloom. It gets handed down to the oldest Potter child just before he—or she, but it's been a 'he' for the last several generations—goes off to Hogwarts. Take good care of it, and, ah, don't let just everyone know that you have it; I'm not sure that you're technically allowed to have them at school." James shot an anxious glance at Mum, wondering if she'd be upset at this mention of rule-breaking, but she was smiling; apparently, she knew what was in the package, and it seemed to be okay with her. "Open it up and try it on," Dad said.

So it was something to wear. Curious, James tore into the package. Inside lay a shimmery, silvery, streamy-looking piece of cloth, folded neatly. It looked almost like liquid, like someone had found a way to spin water into yarn. He touched it gingerly, and it felt much like it looked—cool and light and liquidy. Was it some sort of Dress Robes? No, he didn't need those yet, and they'd hardly have been contraband. "What is it?" he asked.

"Try it on and see," Dad said.

James removed the garment from the package and held it up; it was some sort of cloak. He tossed it around his shoulders and looked across the room into the mirror.

He wasn't there. That is, his reflection wasn't there—not the reflection of his body, at least. His head seemed to hang in mid-air. Suddenly, he realised what this was. "It's an Invisibility Cloak! Neat! Thanks, Dad!" he said.

"Your very welcome, James."

"Jamie! Head!" Nick said, looking very confused.

He looked even more confused when James ruffled his curls with an invisible hand. "My body's invisible, see?" he explained.

"Invibasul?" Nick asked.

"It means you can't see it."

"Can't see. Gone?"

"No, not gone, just—like a window. You can look through me like you can look through the glass in a window, but I'm still here."

"Oh. Window!" Nick pointed across the room to the window. "Moon!" His attention span was getting shorter, James noted. That meant it was getting close to his bedtime. He looked out the window and, just as Nick had reported, the moon was framed in it. It was full tonight.

James took off the cloak and placed it carefully back into the brown paper; he'd pack it as soon as he went back up to his room. "Be careful with that," Dad said, "and have fun with it; it comes in quite useful. I mostly used it to spy on opposing Quidditch teams—learn their moves and the like. Grandfather, I'm told, used it to sneak into the Ravenclaw common room to visit. . . his friends there." James knew that he had been about to say, "to visit your grandmother." "And Grandpa Joe used it to sneak into the Restricted Section of the library. Now, your great-great grandfather, Alden Potter—you won't remember him; he died long before you were born—he was legendary; the rumour is he was actually able to practise Quidditch with it; he found some way to rig it around his broom. I could never get that to work."

"Sounds like lots of fun. I'm sure I'll find lots of things to use it for."

"I'm sure you will," Dad agreed with a grin. "Now, why don't you take Nick on up to bed? I need to discuss some business with your mother."

"Okay, Dad. Thanks again for the Cloak; it's really great."

"You're welcome, son. Send me an owl after your first classes meet, okay? I want to know how everything is going."

"Sure thing. 'Bye!"

"Good-bye."

"Bye-bye, Daddy-head!" Nick called.

"Bye-bye, Nicky. Sleep well."

James carried his little brother down the hall to his nursery. Nick was very sleepy; he nodded off halfway through his bedtime story, "The Dragon and the Banshee." James tucked him in and went to see if Dad had left yet. The study was empty, and the fire was just burning down. He ran upstairs to pack his new cloak and then headed back downstairs to find his mother. She was in the kitchen, giving instructions for tomorrow to the four house elves.

James waited until she had finished and then cleared his throat to get her attention. "Mum? I got Nick off to bed. Went right to sleep; he was pretty tired."

"You did a nice job wearing him out before dinner," Mum said.

"Yeah, well, that was the idea," James replied with a grin. "Though I nearly wore myself out, too."

Mum smiled back. "You should probably head up to bed; we've got to leave pretty early tomorrow to get to King's Cross on time."

"Yeah, I'm pretty tired. G'night, Mum."

"Goodnight, Jamie," she said, bending to kiss him on the top of the head. He didn't bother to correct her; he just smiled to himself and headed up to bed.