It was a grey and glum Saturday morning, throngs of plump, great clouds swarming the sky behind him like flocks of black sheep.
Harry sat perched in his chair with the coffee turning stale in the cup he always kept next to his elbow. He'd been filing through a particularly dreary report written by one of the trainees, grunting low with every painfully slow turn of the page.
For the life of him Harry could not understand how a person could be so dull, the events described in such an overly factual manner, so flat and bland it made him want to scream into the fifty pages of pure boredom. Hell, Percy's old reports on regulating cauldron bottom thickness had been more exciting.
He threw it aside, briefly recalling the ridiculousness he'd had to read through last week, when another trainee had been more focused on minutely describing the wizard's robes and 'chic, pointy hat' rather than on capturing the most essential information. Harry made a mental note to assign a full winter month of Azkaban duty to the next Senior Auror who put similar rubbish on his desk. He never intervened when they passed reporting tasks to their trainees, but he'd at least expected them to read through first.
"Dad," a small voice squeaked from around the hard edge of the desk, pulling his mind off the Auror Office and grounding him back to his home. It was Al, his hair every bit as rumpled as Harry suspected his own was, deep green eyes gazing at him innocently, curiously. "Why do you have funny glasses?"
Harry blinked.
"Sorry?"
"Your glasses were different in the picture. Not round," Al shuffled forward, plowing on quite breathlessly, hands moving in a way that told he had been anxious.
Harry glided right on his rolling chair and bent forward so he was face to face with his son. He was still very confused as he'd always had a pair of simple, round glasses, for as long as he could remember.
"What picture, Al?"
From his little back pocket, Albus pulled an old, moving picture scrunched into a roll. As his son unrolled it with small, chubby fingers, Harry's heart leaped.
"The one where you're holding me," Al squeaked impatiently, holding the picture as high and as close to Harry's face as he could. "Mum said I might wear glasses too, but I don't want round ones. Could I get some like you have here?"
But Harry's eyes were now glued to the moving picture, heart suddenly twisting as the young man grinned at him from it, his jet black hair sticking out madly, hazel eyes glinting from behind a pair of square, golden glasses, softened and rounded around the edges. In his arms, a baby with equally wild, black hair was squealing happily, small arms extended towards the person who was taking the picture.
Probably his Mum, Harry thought with a sharp pang in his chest.
It had been so long since he'd looked through the leather-covered book Hagrid had gifted him at the end of his first year. It had been one of the few things he'd salvaged from the Dursleys the night he left and one of the even fewer things he'd brought with him the year they hunted Horcruxes, wrapped in an old shirt and packed carefully at the bottom of his bag.
Suddenly, it was very cold and he was so very hungry, green eyes welling as they traveled over each photograph on a Christmas Eve. Closing it gently, a young version of him prepared to visit Godric's Hollow for the first time, Hermione by his side, as scared and cold and hungry as he were. His heart squeezed tightly in its cage.
"Dad," Al called him again, fist thudding faintly against Harry's kneecap. Inhaling sharply, Harry took off his glasses for a moment, scrunching his tired eyes shut, and sighed.
"Come here," he said and, leaning forward again, picked up his son and placed him on his knees. "That's not me there, Ally."
His son's big green eyes widened as he looked up at his father, picture wobbling a bit in his small hand. Harry's fingers combed comfortingly through the wild dark locks, wedding band disappearing between the thick strands; in picture form, his own father's hair shone black in the sunlight.
"It's my own Dad," Harry followed gently, "and that's me in his arms."
Albus blinked, gaze switching between the picture and his father's face. Harry gave him space to process, observing as the thoughts were knitted together and linked in his son's head.
"You have a dad?"
Harry exhaled, something bittersweet now clinging to his tongue. He was so innocent in his youth, Al, as pure as any child should be - and as Harry had never been allowed to be.
"Had," he cleared his throat and swallowed. "I had a Dad. And a Mum. Sadly, they died when I was about that age." His fingertip tapped the photo close to the happy baby's face. Again, the tiny arms stretched eagerly towards Lily, probably smiling at him from behind the camera.
"Died?" Albus repeated in a whisper and Harry felt a powerful need to hug his son wash over him.
"Yeah," he nodded, his smile soft. "But Nana and Grandpa Weasley took good care of me as a boy. They're great, aren't they, Al?"
Immediately, his son grinned, squirming a little in his lap as he hurried to recount the latest adventure he'd had at The Burrow with his cousins, as Arthur chased after them happily through the back garden.
He'd have time to tell his children what had really happened, but the time was not now and would not be for quite some time. Harry felt content in that knowledge, cherishing the fact that he could offer his children something better, something infinitely better than he had had. That, with Ginny and him, his children would never not know what love feels like.
With an ever growing grin, Harry listened to Albus chatter excitedly and held onto him tightly, making 'ohs' and 'ahs' at the right time in his son's stories. He softly pushed the rolling chair back, towards the large oval windows, so the small patches of sun breaking through the grey sky shone over Al's rosy cheeks and raven hair, much like it did on the little baby in the picture - in that one moment frozen in time from so many years ago.