Harry

Harry looked at his fingers and – finally – he actually saw them. He felt the cold of metal against his palm. His eyes focussed.

"Sorry, Mum," he said one last time, the words rasping against his throat because he had been saying them over and over again, gripping the hand of her statue. He took a deep breath and in one intensely lucid moment saw himself objectively. He recognised the ludicrousness of what he was doing.

Still, he asked Lily's effigy one last question. "Is it my fault?" He let go of her, stepped back and looked into her face. Then he looked into his father's face. What would they have done if they had found him pinned under some lascivious monster whom they had trusted? Should he have attacked Teddy? He was sure that Sirius would have done, Harry could just picture him doing that. James would have been the same, wouldn't he?

He rubbed at the old scar on his forehead, almost wishing that it would hurt him again and he could be a hero again. The enemy then had at least been an evil being and not Harry's godson, not the son of someone Harry had admired and loved. How would Remus have reacted to the scene in James' bedroom that morning?

A wave of new nausea hit him. The way which he had spent this day had been far from heroic. He had been wallowing, he could see that now. He had been focussing on himself. Ginny would never have done that; she must have spent the day focussed on their poor, abused son. Harry should have been by James' side, too. That's who he should have been thinking about.

Only, every time Harry thought about James now, he saw only his flushed, naked, sweaty skin.

Harry blocked his thoughts of James. Instead, he thought about placing his feet on the path and having them walk him towards home. He focussed on his hands as they took hold of the suffocating fabric of the Invisibility Cloak under which he had been hiding all day. That only served to remind him of the large hands which had gripped his son's young flesh so firmly. That was another thought to push away. Instead, Harry concentrated on his disappointment in his own cowardice.

When he got back into the house, he found Ginny and Lily drinking tea together in the kitchen. They both looked up and at him as he entered. Harry looked into the rest of the bright room behind them and asked, "Where is he?"

"Who?" Lily asked.

"James." Harry didn't think that his voice caught too badly, not considering the fact that what he wanted to say was my poor, poor, boy, my dear, damaged son.

Ginny lifted a piece of parchment from the table. "Not sure," she said. "But Hannah's been in touch. He looked a bit upset, she said, but apart from that -"

"What?" Harry had assumed his son to have been sobbing safely in his mother's arms all day.

"He's booked a room there for tonight. At the Leaky," Ginny finished. Her expression was blank.

"But why?"

"He was asking everyone about Teddy, according to Hannah."

"Of course he's looking for Teddy," Lily said.

"Why?" Harry asked again.

Lily sighed impatiently. "Because he loves him."

Harry felt the heat of fury rise in him. "If Teddy loved James then he wouldn't have done that to him! That's not what love is about, young lady. He was supposed to protect him like a brother, not do, do, do that thing! That is not love, and don't you start thinking it is!" Harry heard himself shouting as though it were someone else in another room doing it. All of the suppressed emotion of the day suffused into this temper fit. At last he had a feeling that he could remember and understand. "Teddy Lupin is incapable of love or respect or any other decency and I don't -"

"No!" Lily yelled back, red-faced and wet-eyed. "James loves Teddy, you stupid prick!"

When Ginny said, "Don't call your father that," it was without any real emotion, like the action of an automaton.

Harry looked down at her, silenced at last by her stillness. Her body slump showed exhaustion and she looked from him to their daughter as though she didn't know whether she could cope with this row on top of everything else. That wasn't his Ginny, that wasn't like his strong, steady girl at all.

Harry sat in the closest chair and took hold of the edge of the table. He made himself concentrate on its varnish and his own breathing until he was calm enough to say to his little Lily Luna, "Explain. Slowly. Quietly. I don't understand what the hell is going on."

Ginny summoned him a cup and poured him some tea, before topping up the other two cups on the table. "James threw some things in a bag and Apparated out of the house this morning. I came down to tell you, but you'd disappeared, too."

"I needed to clear my head."

"Right," Ginny replied dully.

Harry looked at Lily. "Why did he do that?"

Lily took a sip of tea. She didn't look at her father when she said, "He's been in love with Teddy for years, Dad. He never looked at any of his other boyfriends the way he looks at Teddy."

"James had boyfriends?" Harry was nonplussed. "He never mentioned it." There was a twist of disappointment which Harry didn't stop to analyse before he rallied with, "James isn't gay."

Lily rolled her eyes.

Ginny said, "Yes, he is, dear. And he's an adult. He can choose his own partner and you will have to accept that or we'll lose him."

Harry's mind tried to change the shapes burned into it, the image of the scene in James' bedroom that morning, he tried to make sense of it. It made him feel dizzy.