Hello! Put on your party hat! This story is now two years old! I guess that means I should stop neglecting it...

On another note, Merry Christmas! Hopefully, (cross your fingers as you knock on wood) I should have another chapter up next Monday.

If I was J.K. Rowling would I tell you?

"James, what are you doing?" Harry asked.

But his son didn't reply. It was as if James hadn't heard him. As if the tables had been turned and Harry had been the one tormenting Draco all those years ago. The two boys were close enough in appearance to their father's to fool part of Harry's brain into believing it. The other part of his brain was just sick.

"Please Potter. I don't even have my wand," Scorpius begged.

James rolled his eyes. "Stupify!"

The second Harry saw James raise his wand he knew what he had to do. "Protego".

An invisible barrier formed between them. Harry and Scorpius on one side, James and Prongs on the other. James seemed first confused, then angry. He looked at his father with betrayal. "Dad! What are you doing?"

Harry frowned. "I could ask you the same thing! Why would you attack him? He hasn't even got a wand!"

"He's a Malfoy! A Malfoy! Don't you-"

Prongs laid his hand on James's shoulder. "I'm sure Harry has good reasons. Perhaps we should leave the barrier up and give you some time to cool off?"

James's eyes were still burning. "But-"

"Ah, ah, ah, no buts!" said Prongs. "I'm elderly so you have to do what I say."

The room, perhaps complying to Prong's will, replaced Harry's shield charm with a wall. In the center of it was a door. When James tried it, it was staunchly locked.

Prongs beamed. "Well that settles it."

"I haven't tried alohomora yet," said James.

"Don't bother, it's probably a trick door. Might squirt ink at you if you tried. Besides, I need you to help me clean up this mess," Prongs said indicating the broken plates and ketchup that covered the floor.

James, with just the slightest bit of grumbling agreed. Soon the mess was shrinking and James could devote his mental energy to his outrage. How could his own father choose a Malfoy over him? It was ridiculous. Harry must not have been thinking clearly. It just didn't make sense.

Prongs still had no idea what was going on. He knew that it needed to be resolved, though. And to do that he needed to figure out exactly just what 'it' was. But how to breach the topic? Prongs, unable to think of anything better, went for the blunt approach.

"So... Who's this Malfoy bloke?"

Scorpius wanted to ask what in the name of merlin was going on, but he knew his manners. Those had been drilled into him from birth. "Thanks for saving me from Potter".

The other boy grinned. "You'd better call him James, else it will get confusing".

"What do you mean?" asked Scourpius.

"Well, you see" said Harry gently, "we're all three called Potter".

"That must be... difficult," said Scorpius.

"You don't even know the half of it," said Harry.

"But I'm not a Potter. What am I doing here?" said Scorpius, sinking back into his Malfoy drawl. Every respectable Malfoy was required to sound as though he was ever so elegantly bored with almost any situation. It was tradition.

"Well... I suppose that would be my fault," said Harry.

James reeled. "You don't know who the Malfoy's are?"

Prongs rolled his eyes. "Of course I know who the Malfoy's are, yah dingbat! I was asking about this Malfoy in particular!"

James bristled. "He just doesn't respect me, he doesn't respect Dad, and he... Well! He's a Malfoy!"

Prongs ruffled his hair disapprovingly. "Yeah mate, but what's he actually done to you?"

James opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again. "He's a Malfoy," he said again but even to his own ears it sounded weak.

"What exactly does that mean?" asked Prongs pointedly.

"His entire family has been dark for as long as anyone can remember, and all they've ever wished on my family has been harm! And his dad was a death eater! That's what it means!" said James. "I just wanted to make you guys proud."

"Ah," said Prongs, "I see." He said nothing for a long time, and finally James could no longer stand it.

"What? What do you see?" he said.

Prongs spoke without looking at his grandson. "His entire family were dark, as long as anyone could remember, probably longer. They always hated the Potters, though the honor wasn't exclusively ours. Several of them were death eaters, be-heading house elves was a family tradition, and I'm fairly certain one of his great-grandfathers murdered one of mine," Prongs now stared at James in a way that would make Dumbledore proud. "So James, who am I talking about?"

James couldn't answer and he couldn't meet Prongs's eyes.

"Sirius Black, James, I'm talking about Sirius Black," Prongs said. "My best friend. James you've made me anything but proud". He rose and walked towards the bedroom, leaving James to finish cleaning the mess himself.

"Your fault?" Asked Scorpius. "If it was anyone's fault, I would have thought it would have been Po- I mean James's."

"He gets it from me. I seem to get in trouble no matter what I do," said Harry. "That's why we're here, really."

Scorpius decided that staring blankly at Harry would probably be the best way to get his point across.

"I don't want to be alive," said Harry, "but it's not that I'm suicidal. I just thought that I was already dead and I didn't really mind, but now I know I'm not, but I'm not alive either. I just-"

"Wait, wait, wait," said Scorpius. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Dumbledore wants me to choose to live. So he set this whole thing up to convince me."

"Oh," said Scorpius, who was still confused. "Why don't you want to live?"

Harry shook his head. "I guess everyone is just better off without me. James always hates it when I say that, because if I die it means he's never born, but after today? Maybe... I mean it's a horrible thing to say, that he should never be born. But that's not really what I mean, is it? What if he had a different father, one who could look after him properly? One that wasn't me? Maybe, he wouldn't- Well, I mean, maybe, the two of you could have been... not enemies."

Scorpius let Harry ramble on, but his mind was elsewhere. So this Harry really was James's father, and that meant he was Harry Potter, savior of all the wizarding world, and Scorpius didn't really know what the rest of it meant but he knew he had to do something. So when Harry paused to take a breath he spoke up. "I don't think anyone would be better off if you decided to die".

Harry stared.

"You're the one who killed Voldemort and got the wizarding world back on track. My dad says that without you we all would have been running around like headless chickens for years," said Scorpius.

"Your dad?" asked Harry. Draco said something about him that wasn't an insult? It beggared all belief.

"Privately he's quite complimentary of you," said Scorpius, "you did keep him out of Azkaban, after all."

"But how can you be sure that all that wouldn't happen without me?" asked Harry, who still wasn't convinced.

Scorpius huffed. "You don't get it. We need you, even now your work isn't finished. You think it will all be over once Voldemort is dead? Think again! There are still ignorant, violent people running around out there, there are still hate crimes, inequality, pain and misery. And we need people to inspire us to stand up and fight them Harry, and for a long time you were the only one we could see. You were the only one who could make us realize we were all suffering together, and that we could all help each other, even if we couldn't help ourselves."

"Scorpius I can't! I ruin everything!" said Harry.

"No, Harry you don't. You want to know what I think?" asked Scorpius, "I think you're too afraid to go back! I think you're afraid of all the work it will take to make things better again, and you think that if you die someone else will do it for you, and maybe they will, but Harry, if you think for one second that it will be easier for everyone if you die, you're wrong. It will just be easier for you."

Both pairs of boys spent the night in varying degrees of silence. When morning came, the wall that split the room in two vanished. Prongs was the first to notice the change, in fact he had been impatiently awaiting it. You see, while the side that James and Prongs were stuck on had the kitchen and the bedroom, it was lacking in one area. One very important area, that Prongs madly dashed to the moment the wall began to disappear. Fortunately he was not too late and within several minutes he was feeling considerably better.

On his way back Prongs noticed that he wasn't the only one up. Harry was sitting in one of the bean bag chairs, deep in thought, but awake. "Oi, Harry?" said Prongs in a loud whisper. It wasn't really appropriate to yell, when two of the four of them were still sleeping, but Prongs was worried that Harry was so lost in his thoughts that he would need something to guide him back again.

Harry turned to his father blearily. The spell had been broken. "What is it?"

"Oh... Y'know," said Prongs, "the usual." He had not gone into the conversation with a plan and now he was paying for it.

Luckily for Prongs, Harry had so many ideas and notions bumping through him that his brain had become too crowded for them all to fit and a few of them came tumbling out his mouth. "He wants me to live, Prongs."

Prongs felt slightly annoyed. "Harry, we all want you to live," he said a bit peevishly.

"Yes, but all of you like me, or at least rely on my survival to insure that you're born," Harry added on the last part when he remembered that James didn't really like him at the moment. "Scorpius shouldn't like me, and he shouldn't care if I choose to die, but he does."

As Harry spoke those words the sleeping Scorpius disappeared.

Prongs smiled. "That boy knocked some sense into you without even being conscious. That I can respect."

"But what next?" asked Harry, "He was the last of the three visitors."

"Pancakes!" said Prongs jovially.

And Harry agreed.

Thank you for sticking with this story from the beginning! Please review and have a Happy New Year!