A/N: Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers! Just a note-Harry/David is an awfully stubborn man. He will not move fast towards telling anyone the entire truth, but will have a split personality for a while until he reconciles his two personas. Remember he has been building and fortifying a wall between himself and his past for sixteen years-it won't crumble easily or quickly.

The Letter

David scowled as he saw the owl flying towards him. He was eating lunch in the park when he caught sight of the bird. He knew it would be a letter addressed to Harry Potter. He could not completely stop owls addressed to that name from finding him, the best he could do was cast a spell around his house itself that confused any owl carrying a letter for Harry Potter. However, once he was off his own property, the owls could find him without trouble.

The bird dropped the letter on the table beside him and then ruffled his feathers and perched on a branch overhanging the picnic table.

Don't they ever give up? David thought in anger. It had been about six months since he had last received a letter addressed to his alter ego. And that was the longest period in the past sixteen years without letters.

He opened the letter determined to make the person who dared speak to him pay. His eyes widened though as he read the contents of the letter.

Dear Mister Potter,

My name is Courtney Barnes. I am a first year at Hogwarts. In our history class we have been assigned a project on a figure in history-I chose you. I should probably explain my reason for this. I am a Muggleborn witch and so I really don't know all that much about the wizarding world. Professor Granger gave us a summarized history, but I like details. Plus, I found out that my wand has the same core that your wand has.

Professor Granger warned me against writing to you and so I am prepared for an unpleasant reply from you, but I thought it was better to write you instead of not. You see, only you can give the information I need. Everyone in the wizarding world is hiding the truth from me about you. I'll tell you what I learned and hopefully, you can tell me the whole truth.

You were born to Lily and James Potter. They died when you were one year old. Lord Voldemort killed them and tried to kill you, but something about your mother's sacrifice for you made the curse bounce off of you and back onto Voldemort.

I don't really know anything about how or where you grew up or even what house you were in at Hogwarts, the professors all seem to avoid any topic centering around you.

When you were fifteen Voldemort returned. He was defeated in 2005, when you were 25. Professor Granger said you helped Headmaster Dumbledore defeat him once and for all. You were accused of murder when you were fifteen-though I only know this because Professor Granger told me right after I purchased my wand-none of the books about you mention that it was murder you were framed for. You were sentenced to life in Azkaban.

I know almost nothing about Azkaban-in fact until yesterday I didn't know that dementors once guarded the prison. Nobody in my generation knows. They told us that Aurors guard the prison-making no indication that it was not always that way.

I guess they soften it for us, but I don't understand it. I think it does more harm than good. I have a friend who kind of detests you because of the reaction anything about you gets from her mother. She doesn't understand why you were hurt so much when you were wrongly accused and convicted of a crime because she doesn't know how torturous it must have been. Of course I don't either. But I have a better idea than most of those my age.

I apologize for writing to you when I know you don't want to be contacted. It's just, I want to know the truth and nobody else will give it to me.

Thank you for reading this and I hope to receive some answer from you.

Sincerely,

Courtney Barnes.

Lunch now long forgotten, David stared at the letter, completely at a loss as to what to do. The letter sat there taunting him with his daughter's handwriting. Her naïve desire to know the truth.

Well, he wouldn't write back. Of course not. What would everyone think? Harry Potter replying civilly to a letter after sixteen years. He'd be swamped with owls! But he couldn't curse her either! That was unthinkable. So he would simply ignore the correspondence.

Kathryn's words came back to him. So now you're refusing to communicate with her?

He still refused to openly read Courtney's letters. He and Kathryn had not been on the best of terms for the past month. She was confused and he was adamant. She was hurt and he was afraid. He couldn't tell her the truth, the past. It would undermine all he had achieved in the past sixteen years.

As he slowly finished his lunch his eyes drifted back over the letter.

Could he just ignore her?

He had to!

But…he longed to talk with his daughter, to become part of her life again. He couldn't do that as David Barnes without revealing the truth.

But maybe….

Could he possibly become part of her life as Harry Potter?

Was it worth the risk?

He remembered the first time he held her as an infant. Her remembered when she first learned to talk. He remembered the pictures she used to draw for him. He remembered when she had come running to him after scraping her knees. He remembered the excited expression on her face as she spoke of Diagon Alley.

He remembered the hurt look in her eyes when he had told Sirius that he didn't want magic in his home. He remembered the desperate look on her face when he had walked out of the hotel room a few hours before Hermione had picked her up.

He remembered that the last letter had only been addressed to Michael and Kathryn.

No he couldn't hurt his daughter again. And if David Barnes couldn't bare the thought of writing to his child, then Harry Potter couldn't bare the thought of disappointing her.

He sighed and looked at the owl. "Meet me back here for lunch tomorrow," he said as he stood.

The owl hooted, apparently understanding and flew off to find a night-perch.

That evening, after Kathryn and Michael had already gone to bed he sat down at the computer to type out a reply.

It had been a week since Courtney had written to Harry Potter. She nervously awaited some response. She hadn't told anyone, not even Angela, that she had written to Harry Potter.

At breakfast she was cramming for a quiz they were supposed to have in Charms that day when an envelope dropped right into her scrambled eggs. She grumbled and glared at the owl that had delivered it and then her eyes widened in surprise as she recognized the school owl she had used to send the letter to Harry Potter.

She stuffed the letter into her backpack and ran from the hall—leaving her breakfast half finished. She quickly entered the closest classroom and shut the door behind her in order to open the envelope in private.

She had no clue what to expect and so wanted to answer in private. She carefully opened the envelope and to her surprise she found two pages of folded printer paper.

She eagerly opened them and found a letter addressed to her.

Dear Miss Barnes,

No doubt you are wondering why I am replying to your letter. Well, I'll just say: Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I was astonished to say the least to read your letter. I have had nothing to do with the wizarding world for sixteen years and I really have no wish to be involved now, especially since you have told me how they have managed to deceive themselves into thinking they can gloss over the past.

To tell you the truth I am angry at some of the things they have taught you. But then, I have not been entirely truthful to anyone since I left the wizarding world. Okay I can face facts, I have not been at all truthful to anyone. My own wife is unaware of my past.

Congratulations, you are the first person to know that Harry Potter is married.

I guess I will start by telling you about my life growing up. After my parents were killed I was sent to live with my maternal aunt and her husband. I grew up without parental affection, without an adult mentor in my life. My aunt and uncle despised me and tried their hardest to put out the last spark of magic in me.

They knew I was a wizard, but they never told me. I didn't find out until my eleventh birthday-July 31, 1991. Rubeus Hagrid came and found me and told me the truth-my past, my powers, everything.

I was overjoyed. I went to Hogwarts with dreams of what life might be like with friends. And I made friends.

I was sorted into Gryffindor, like yourself. However, the sorting hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, I begged it not to.

I had a lot of good times and a lot of hard times at Hogwarts. I survived, however, because I had my friends. I gained a Godfather when I was thirteen who became a father figure to me. For the first time in my life I learned to trust those around me.

Rubeus Hagrid was the first person who was ever kind to me or told me I was worth something. I loved him above all others because of that.

It was Hagrid whom I was accused of murdering.

Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were my best friends. For the most part we were inseparable. We had our squabbles, but we were always there for each other when it mattered most. I had the wildest adventures with them, but I always knew it would be okay because we were together. I have enclosed a picture of the three of us together that was taken during Christmas of our fifth year. It was one month before I was framed.

I'm not sure if you can handle the entire truth Courtney, what will it do to you, to find out what this world that you have embraced can do? How cruel it can be?

I hesitate to tell it to you. I remember Dumbledore once saying to me that the truth was a wonderful and beautiful thing that should be treated with caution. I think that is the only thing that I still agree with him on.

Are you sure you want to know? I await your reply.

Sincerely,

Harry Potter.

Courtney stared in utter astonishment at the letter and the accompanying picture of the trio. She hadn't dared hope for anything even remotely similar to this.

But there it was, a reply from Harry Potter, with an invitation to continue, no less!

She realized belatedly that she had heard the bell ring signaling the start of class a few minutes before.

She ran out of the room and to Charms.

Professor Weasley had already handed out the quizzes when she got there. He took five points from Gryffindor and gave her a detention, but nothing could dampen her spirits that day.

Authors note:

If anyone thinks Harry is too open in the letter, I think it works because he has separated himself from it. As David Barnes he can't do anything for fear of revealing the past. However, he has managed to convince himself that being Harry Potter in the letter will keep him separated from the past, because he is now David Barnes and not Harry Potter, while at the same time fulfilling his wish to remain part of Courtney's life, but ignoring the fact that she has no knowledge that he is her father. It might not make a lot of sense logically, but whoever said the human heart was logical? This is just the way he has rationalized his actions and emotions in order to retain part of his sanity.