To the ones I love,

I came back home with Saki. I received the answers I was looking for, and I felt whole for the first time. I first wanted to say I felt whole for the first time in two years, but now that I am writing these words, I feel like it is the first time ever. Going back to New York was not an easy decision. I had been contemplating my future for nights and days, wondering where I should go, where I belonged, and where it felt like home. What is home? I suppose I've been asking myself this question my entire life. A home is not a fixed location; it isn't a tangible truth that you were born with. Home is ephemeral and fragile; it can change, evolve, expand or contract; it can be a place or a feeling. My first home was a picture, a memory I lost, a house where I said my first words, where I took my first steps, where I slept for the first time, cried for the first time, laughed for the first time. My first home remains engraved in me as a feeling, a nostalgia for a utopia, an idea of a life I didn't get. Then I spent the next ten years looking for my home, and when every time I called my aunt "mother", she got enraged; every time I hugged her, she pushed me away; every time my uncle threatened to send me to the nearest orphanage, I remembered the house I lived in wasn't home. It was during this period that I realized the word home wasn't a given. Then I went to Hogwarts, and for the first time, I understood what home was. When I reflect on this, I wonder how a place where I went through my most traumatic experiences could still be my home, but I can't describe how I feel about Hogwarts, and I don't think I need to find the words to explain as it is deeply personal. My second home was the Burrow, the crooked house in the middle of the countryside, where everything was extraordinary for my twelve-year-old self. A part of me craved this home full of loving people who deeply cared for each other and could survive anything as long as they were together. You inspired me; you taught me far more than you think about life—about family, relationships, humans, and life itself.

But I decided to go back to New York, where I have my job, my father, and my sister. I feel like it's where my home is right now. I still have so much to explore, so much to build in this new life that was given to me. Losing my memory was a new opportunity to start again, to reconstruct a life where I could be my main character, where I could take decisions, write my future, and be whomever I aspired to become. I learned so much about myself during those times when I was the most different. Not remembering my life has allowed me to discover who I truly was, and what I truly wanted. It took me a while to realize that I had the right to choose for myself. And now, all I want is to stay free and not lose everything I worked on. This is the life I want—the life where I don't have a knot in my stomach all the time. I don't want to be famous; I don't want to be talked about; I don't want to have my pictures in the newspapers; I don't want to be the subject of gossip around the bars' tables. I just want to be happy. I just want to have the courage to be my own home. At the end of the day, I just hope I will be proud of the man I have become. I want to be proud of the kid I was—this kid who was seeking a little bit of love, of the teenager who tried to grow—and I hope I will be proud of the way I healed, the way I survived, no matter how difficult it was. I've never felt so loved, nor have I ever loved so much.

To Mrs. and Mr. Weasley,

You never had to call me son to make me feel at home. I would never be able to thank you enough for everything you did for me. Every year, I would wait at my uncle and aunt's, impatient and excited to get the signal of my freedom. By freedom, I mean you. The burrow and the family living inside, welcoming me as one of them each summer, have been the most intense feelings I have ever felt growing up. That sense of belonging, of significance to someone. You are the kindest, most generous, bravest, and most loyal family I have ever known. You are like an island—a haven of goodness lost in a world full of wrong. Thank you for always welcoming me, even when it came with danger. Thank you for always making me feel at home. I lost my two parents that night in 1981, but today I feel like I have the chance to be surrounded by so many loving parents. Thank you.

I need to promise you that I will return. I will return to see my heart family, as well as my godson. I want to see him grow, be there to play with him, teach him mischief, tell him about his parents, and teach him about life. I will always make sure to be there for him, to be there when he needs guidance as an orphan, to assist him in finding the answers I lacked as a child. All of you will always be welcome in my life as well; there will always be room for you and for Teddy in America. I would feel honored to open the door to my new life for you and show you what I started to build across the ocean with my father and my sister. Seeing you all together at the burrow, conversing in the living room as if you had known each other forever, made me realize how much I needed all of you in my life and how lucky I am to live in a world where I know you.

To Ron, Hermione,

I have so many things I want to tell you that I don't know if life will be enough. I would like to start by thanking you. I don't know if you realize how much you saved my life and how much you changed it for the better. You were my first friends; I don't know if I've already told you this. You are the two people who taught me what friendship was, what trust meant. You made me realize that life could also be shared, that I wasn't doomed to be on my own forever. I have never laughed more than with you, and I have never cried more than with you. I am deeply grateful for having grown up by your side and for having lived all these adventures with you. I want you to be sure that I will always be here for you, no matter the paths we take or the distance. I want to see you marry, I want to see you look at your baby with these terrified but awestruck parents' eyes, I want to see you succeed in your lives and in your family, and I want to see us grow old, with our first white hair, wrinkles, and aching backs; and I want to see you become grandparents, spoiling your grandchildren with sweets and toys. I've always known we would never be separated; we could never be separated, not after everything we've been through together. It will always be the three of us, and no one can understand each other as we do. I promise you that I am not running away, not this time. It is not a farewell; it is not even a goodbye. I love you both so much, and I am so proud of what you have become. Thank you for having never abandoned me, thank you for having always supported me, even in the most difficult times. I would be nothing without you; never forget it. I am proud to call you my friends, and I am proud to know it will last forever.

To Ginny,

Ginny, my sweet Ginny, I feel tremendously proud of the beautiful woman you have become, of your career, which I have never had a doubt about, of your confidence, and of the place you have managed to find within this overly masculine society. You are wonderful. And I will forever admire you for who you are. It wouldn't come to my mind to deny the importance you have had in my heart, and I would never forget that you have been my first true love. I loved you, Ginny; I really, genuinely loved you, and a part of me will always carry this feeling. You made me happy in a way nobody ever did, at a time I needed you the most. I am so sorry life decided to tear us apart so fast. I feel like we had so much more to live together. I don't regret anything about our relationship; I don't regret the way I loved you, the way my gaze was constantly looking for you on the corridors, on the quidditch field, at the burrow. And I hope you don't regret it as well. You will always have a special place in my heart, the place of a first love that changed me, changed my vision of life, and made me discover a new form of happiness I had never felt before. Seeing you with Saki is the most beautiful gift you two could have given me. I love you both so much; you are so precious to me. I can confidently say, knowing you both as I do, that you were made to be together. You bring the best out of each other in a way nobody else could. Saki and you deserve the world; you deserve someone to tell you how wonderful you are, how kind, generous, and funny you both are, and how much you both deserve to be happy. I hope you will have the chance to build something for the future, and if it isn't together, I wish you happiness in everything you will live through.

To Draco,

It is hard for me to know what to write to you. I would have never, in a million years, thought to write to you in the first place. And certainly not writing your name next to the word "love." And yet, I love you. It is the reality in which we both live now, a reality in which I miss you every second that passes. In our short existence, I have met you twice. I met you when we were just kids, and I hated you. I despised you with all my heart. You hated me too; you couldn't even bear my existence. We were the fiercest of rivals—two rebellious souls who would brawl on any given occasion. And I met you this year—just a few weeks ago, really—and I fell in love with you. I felt so deep in the arms of a man who taught me that love was worth the sacrifice. I don't understand what happened in our lives to make us change so much and alter the way we see each other. But the more I think about it, the more I realize we have never been really different from each other. Or we were; we were so different, so opposite, that we became similar. We were just two sides of the same coin. I am grateful that we have evolved to finally become a version of ourselves that understands each other. I feel sorry for us because our love is so complicated, so unfathomable to the rest of the world. I'm sorry you had to hide your true self from your family your entire life and that you had to grow up in an altered version of yourself to be accepted, but more importantly, to survive. It took me a while to understand how unhappy you were, perhaps I would have never realized it if you hadn't shown up in that club that night with the others if you hadn't tried to create something with me, if I hadn't fallen in love with you, and if I hadn't seen you from a new perspective. Do you think there is a possibility of you and I? With the names we carry, the past and present we share, can you imagine a future together? I don't have the answer, and I am scared to know. I thought my life after the war would be a wide field full of possibilities and freedom, but now I realize there are still barriers and pitfalls. We are never truly free, not when people are still watching and judging us, not when the world is still violent and cruel.

I feel blessed for the weeks we have lived together, for all the seconds, minutes, and hours by your side, during which I had the chance to know who you were, to admire you, to cuddle in your arms, where I felt the safest and finally at peace.

My life changed once again that day when, in my anger, you told me "I love you". I couldn't believe you told the truth. I tried so hard to suppress my feelings, but when I tried to convince myself I wasn't in love with you, I understood I was. I don't know what will happen in the future; I just hope you will be happy. No matter what path we take, I will always keep in my head the pictures of the most perfect, beautiful soul you have had the courage to show me, and I will always be glad to know there is someone like you in this world.

I love you,

Harry Byrd Potter.

(***)

Two weeks later

Harry quietly yawned for the fifth time in the last thirty minutes as he finally served his last drink of the night. The crowd didn't seem to diminish despite the passing hours, which on a weekday were relatively rare. He stepped back to the back of the bar to avoid new customers soliciting him, leaving Steve to take over.

"I'm going home," he said to Saki as she walked past him, her right hand under a tray full of empty glasses.

She was radiant that evening; she wore a new mini skirt that she had bought the day before after having spent several hours comparing all the models, going through each pattern and each color, until Chloë ended up losing her patience and deciding for her. It was a fir-green velvet skirt, a color that caught Harry's attention because it was Ginny's favorite color, as far as he remembered.

The girl put the tray down and turned to Harry, her eyes adorned with golden glitter, staring at him intently.

"You look tired," she noted as she ran her hand over his cheek.

He nodded and straightened up from the counter.

"Go take some rest."

"Wait, aren't you coming to Joshua's?" Chloë appeared behind Saki, a glass of mojito ready to be served in her hand.

"No, I'm exhausted, sorry."

And he was. He hadn't felt so tired in a long time, probably since the attack at the club. Club which had been perfectly restored by Gary before anyone had time to see the damage. Albert, who had changed out of his drag costume, approached the counter;

"What's going on here?" He inquired, his arm around Harry's shoulders.

"Harry's not coming to the party because he's too tired," Chloë said, miming quotation marks with her fingers.

"Sorry?" Albert exclaimed

Chloë would have stayed to try to convince her friend to come to her brother's, but customers were swarming in front of the bar, and Steve couldn't do it alone.

"Do you have a date?" Asked Albert

"What? No!"

"Is that him over there?"

He followed Albert's finger, which pointed to a young man with curly brown hair sitting at a table not far from the bar. This young man had come to the bar for refills several times during the evening, each time making sure to be served by Harry.

Harry grimaced and shook his head.

"No, no, no, I'm just tired, and I need to rest for your birthday."

Albert stepped back and stared at him skeptically.

"It's on Saturday."

"Yes... four nights' sleep seems like enough to get through your birthday party," Harry shrugged.

Albert laughed as he nudged Harry on the shoulder, then ruffled his hair, as he liked to do to annoy him, before walking away from the bar. Harry pushed his hair back into place (which was still somewhat disheveled) and kissed Saki on the cheek.

"Stay safe; tell me when you're home," she told him before he disappeared through the crowd and headed to the main door.

The night was pleasant, spring had finally replaced the icy wind of this late winter, which allowed New Yorkers to no longer bother with coats. The light night breeze cooled his skin, which he felt was sticky and clammy from a long evening working in a closed, crowded room. He only dreamed of one thing—his bed. However, he decided to walk home. In fact, he hadn't used magic since he regained his memory. He didn't know exactly why he was preventing himself from taking advantage of his wizarding privileges to make his life easier—to get home faster, to cook—and even for the simplest things he had kept his Muggle habits. He had also left his wand in one of his drawers in his room and had not touched it since his return from Japan. Perhaps he was trying to convince himself that he had made the right decision by leaving the wizarding world and returning to New York. His closest friends had offered him their support, assuring him that he had made the decision that seemed the most right for him, and that they would never question his choices or his sincerity. He had received those letters a few days after sending his own and had since treasured those loving words in his bedroom, next to his wand. He had found himself reading them over and over every night when he got home, and every night he remembered that he hadn't received a response from Draco.

He hadn't heard from him since he had left the burrow. He had tried to live with it; maybe it was a way of telling him that he was right, of confirming to him that their love was impossible and that they should each go their own way. And yet it was difficult. Every night when he fell asleep, he missed him. And every morning, when he woke up in his empty bed, he missed him even more. Being away from him had taught him the value of his worth, and he felt sorry for pushing him away as he did.

He entered his dark and quiet apartment. It smelled like nothing. The scent of Draco's perfume had faded with his absence, leaving nothing but his own scent, which smelled of emptiness. He could see his bed perfectly made from the entrance, where he stood. He sighed and removed his shoes without bothering to use his hands, then dragged himself to the bathroom, where he took an unnecessarily too-long shower. As much as he wanted his bed, he felt this strange laziness preventing him from stopping the water. He remained still, facing the tiles wall as the stream of water ran through his long hair. He felt like he had stayed in this bathtub for hours, his mind empty and loud at the same time, his ears still buzzing from the heady music of the club. He then heard his phone ring from the pocket of his pant, it was a message. He eventually got out of the shower and tied a towel around his waist, before withdrawing his phone from his pile of clothes.

"Please take some rest Har', I see you tomorrow to go buy Albert's gift, don't forget to wake up, love u, Saki"

Harry sighed and tossed his phone on his bed, where he sat, still wet and undressed. He had not even bothered to dry his hair, from which multiple drops were sliding down his back to the mattress. He had forgotten about Albert's gift; he had promised Saki they would go together to the mall before noon. He fell on his back on his tucked-in blanket, his arms outstretched. Horns cried in the main street not far from his apartment, at a late, or too early hour to be socially acceptable to generate such noise. He wondered how people could be so irritated at five o'clock in the morning when all he could feel at night was nostalgia. He turned his head toward the drawer where he kept all the letters from England. He would have normally read them over and over like he did every night, but he refrained from moving. Sometimes he wondered if he had made the right decision by leaving behind him his entire life—did he hurt people again? Was he selfish? Perhaps this was the reason why he kept reading these letters—to remind himself he had done his best and to try engraving their words, their love, and their support into his veins. He had imagined his life back in England, where he would have had to find a new job—what would he have become, an Auror? He didn't want to anymore. He loved his life in New York; he had never felt more alive than when he wasn't Harry Potter, the chosen one, the boy who lived, the Wizarding World's savior. He had never felt so whole as when he became Harry, just Harry, the son of Gary Byrd and brother of Saki Kimura. And yet, he still felt a heavy weight of emptiness in his chest, as if something were missing, something that should be here but wasn't. "It will pass," he had thought. But what if it didn't? Would he stay hungry in his bed, waiting for life to continue for him, counting the minutes until he finally felt better?

He thought he heard an unusual sound coming from the other end of his apartment, but it didn't intrigue him enough to make him budge. He closed his eyes, hoping for sleep to take over his consciousness. However, the sound continued to annoy him until he finally dragged himself out of bed. He lazily put on a random shirt he found on a chair and a boxer from his closet. A part of him suggested he fetch his wand before going to the door, but he didn't. He headed toward the sound and half opened the door, hoping to be disturbed in the middle of the night for a good reason.

"Hi"

Harry stared at the smiling, familiar face that filled the hole in his chest. Draco was standing, his hands in his leather jacket's pocket, his blond hair tucked behind his ear.

"Hi…" Harry babbled with an obviously surprised look on his face.

He let the man enter and felt suddenly pathetic in his oversized t-shirt and boxers, with his not-combed wet hair.

"I had no idea it got this hot here," Draco chuckled as he removed his warm jacket. Harry hurried to take it from his hands and hang it on the cluttered coat rack.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, even if he was only ready for one answer. His half-empty chest was now so full it almost hurt.

"You asked me to find happiness," Draco answered in a low voice. "I was hoping I could find it here, with you?"

Harry stood still. He couldn't find the words to answer as he watched him like an art lover admiring his favorite painting. He focused on the moment; he tried to realize that he was not asleep in his bed, that it was not a dream, for his eyes were wide open.

"To answer your question," Draco continued with the same calm tone, "yes, I can see a future together, perhaps not where you thought. If you can't love me where I am, what about loving you where you are?"

"But... your life"

"Which life? Nothing has started for me, I tore out all the pages of my life."

"What about your father?"

Harry didn't know why he was trying to contradict him. His heart was bouncing from excitement against his ribs, and his brain generated so much energy that he wasn't feeling tired anymore. In fact, he had never felt so awake.

"My dad is in jail, Harry. I don't know about the future, but please let us only think about the present for now."

Draco took a few steps toward him; he smelled good, the same appealing citrus and spice perfume that had impregnated his apartment for weeks.

"And don't tell me you are afraid of my father?" He teased him.

Harry gave a small smile and shook his head. Draco's scent imbibed the air around him. He felt Draco's hand reaching for his fingers. He let him stroke his skin as his brain consumed him like a wave in the middle of a storm.

"Would you accept me in your life?" the blond man asked, Harry looked up at him and met his gray eyes. He was everything he could picture in his future, where all the new pages of his book would be filled with his name.

"Of course, I do."

Draco leaned forward, his pointy nose touching the end of Harry's

"Can I kiss you?" Draco whispered,

"Do you always ask permission?"

So Draco kissed him, and Harry bloomed.


The end