It was later that evening that James found himself pausing outside of McGonagall's office. Earlier, as they left the hospital wing, his father had suggested that he head down to get dinner before they discussed anything, and since James had missed lunch, he was only too keen to agree to this. It was purely by coincidence that they had then run into the Headmistress, who had in turn offered her office to afford them some degree of privacy.

Swallowing down his sudden and uncalled for nerves, James cautiously raised his fist, and knocked on the door. To his surprise – and relief – the door was opened by Teddy, who waved him into the room.

Trying not to question the situation too far, James preceded his would-be-brother into the room, and sank into the vacant seat beside his father, wondering at the relaxed familiarity that existed between the adults. His gaze slid from his father, to McGonagall behind her desk, to Neville, and finally to Teddy, now lounging on his chair with an amused smirk on his face.

If I thought this was going to lessen my confusion, thought James, I was sorely mistaken.

It was Teddy who finally broke the silence, apparently unable to contain himself any longer. "I knew they were up to something!" he exclaimed triumphantly.

"Well," said Harry, his tone laced with sarcasm, "It would have been nice if you'd stepped in before he ended up in the hospital wing."

Teddy twisted his hands guiltily in his lap, refusing to meet Harry's gaze. "I would never have imagined anything like this happening," he said, still speaking resolutely to his hands. "I'm so sorry," he added in a small voice.

"None of us saw this coming," said McGonagall kindly, smiling at Teddy when he looked up gratefully at her. "But I think that it's probably for the best that James gets the real story, rather than some garbled version from dubious sources."

James froze, like a deer caught in the head lights, as all of the other occupants of the room turned to look at him. All of the questions which had been forming in his mind over the past hour fled from his mind, and he managed to utter an eloquent "Um."

Harry smiled, and stepped in, once more demonstrating the unspoken bond that the two seemed to share. "I'm sure you're wondering why these three are here too?" James simply nodded mutely – now that his father had raised the point, he was curious. Harry glanced at his son, and settled further into his chair, assuming the position of the story teller who knows they have a long story to tell.

"Well," he began, "I thought that Teddy deserved the chance to get the whole story, rather than just the pieces he had outright asked about. Professor McGonagall, has been part of this since before my part of the story began, and likewise, there are parts of the story that Neville – I, uh, mean Professor Longbottom – knows far better than I." He paused, and looked at Neville, their eyes meeting, allowing a silent communication to pass between them. The room fell into silence as they watched the two men communicate, unable to even begin to guess at what ran between them.

Finally, Harry turned back to look at his son. "Do you have any specific questions?" he prompted.

James floundered for just a moment before asking the first question that came to him. "What were you really doing during what should have been your seventh year?" he asked.

Harry's eyebrows rose, and somewhere behind James, Neville's expression darkened at the reminder of his final year at Hogwarts; McGonagall placed a comforting hand on his arm.

"There's nothing like jumping in at the deep end, is there?" Harry smiled at his son. "I can't really explain that without first starting at the very beginning…" he said, pausing to look at James as though asking for permission. Once more, James could do no more than nod dumbly.

Harry glance once more around the room, his gaze settling for a moment on the portrait of Dumbledore which hung behind McGonagall's desk, before he turned back to his son. There was a tension akin to an electric current in the room, and James was sat on the edge of his seat.

Harry took a deep breath, and began to speak directly to his son, though there was no doubt that everyone else in the room was hanging on his every word. "Well, regardless of where you got your information from, there can be no doubt that there is a unique link between me and Riddle. So, it should come as no surprise that the story begins with him.

"What not a lot of people know, is that he was orphaned as a child, and grew up in the muggle world. When he started Hogwarts, he showed great potential, and it soon became apparent that he sought nothing more than power. After finishing school, he began to amass followers, and power, and so his reign of terror began." He paused, and looked at James. "But of course, you know about that."

James nodded, and prodded his father to continue. "So where do you fit into this?"

Harry sighed, and glanced at McGonagall. Once more, she offered him her reassuring smile, and, taking a deep breath, Harry continued.

"Around the time I was born, a prophecy was made. It said that the one to defeat Riddle would soon come. It was overheard, and relayed to Riddle. Riddle in turn, interpreted it to be talking about me. On Halloween in 1981, he came to my parents' home with the intent to kill all three of us. After my parents' died, he tried to kill me, but the curse failed, and he was 'destroyed'." Harry faltered, and his bottom lip trembled minutely. James stared, dumbstruck; Skeeter's book had more or less told them this already, but to have it confirmed was another thing altogether.

Sensing Harry's unease, McGonagall picked up the story. "Word spread like wildfire through the magical world – Voldemort's was defeated! And by a baby! There wasn't a man, woman, or child who hadn't heard of Harry Potter." She offered Harry a sad smile. "Professor Dumbledore decided that it would be best to place Harry in the care of his Aunt and her family, his Aunt being his only living blood relative. He worked an ancient piece of magic whereby the protection his mother provided him with by sacrificing herself, would live on in his Aunt's blood."

"And so," said Harry, "I was cut off from the magical world for the next ten years of my life. I won't claim that they treated me well, but I was, at least, alive. Then Hagrid came into the picture, and suddenly everything changed – but you already know that part of the story.

"I had an… eventful time at Hogwarts, to say the least. It was in my fourth year, during the Tri-Wizarding tournament that Riddle rose again. But he had grown wise during his exile. He kept to the shadows this time, and for a long time, no one believed that he had returned. I was painted an attention seeking liar." The was a bitter edge to Harry's tone – he had yet to reconcile his differences with the Daily Prophet.

"I saw the articles," offered James.

Harry raised his eyebrows, "You did do your research. I'm impressed. So, eventually, after an incident at the ministry, the wizarding world could no longer deny his return, and so, I became the victimised hero again." The bitter tone was still colouring Harry's story, and it reminded James of the vulnerability he had seen in his father earlier in the day.

"Wait a second," said Teddy, "I thought you said he was destroyed? You can't just return."

Harry looked at his God-son, before glancing at the painting of Dumbledore again. "And so we reach James' initial question," he said. "Riddle had taken a series of steps to prevent himself from dying, to make himself immortal.

"Have you ever heard of a horcrux?" he asked, half-heartedly, already knowing that they wouldn't. There were some parts of his story that he had wanted kept out of the public eye – mostly through fear that someone would attempt to copy them at some point in the future. "Well, a horcrux, is an object in which a wizard places a piece of his soul. As long as your horcrux is intact, you cannot truly die." He paused, and smiled absently at the look of disgust on the two youngster's faces.

"It's incredibly dark magic – the soul can only be split through an act of murder. At the point when Riddle killed my parents, he had already created five. That's what we spent that year hunting down – yes, I was with Ron and Hermione – the horcruxes. Contrary to the picture Skeeter's book paints, it was in the UK. And it was a miserable year. Not that it was any better at Hogwarts." Harry glanced at Neville, and the other man picked up the story.

"In our seventh year, Hogwarts was being run by Death Eaters. Life was miserable for anyone opposed to Voldemort. A group of us reformed the DA – you've heard about that? Though I don't suppose your father told you he used to be the leader – and it became a sort of resistance group. We tried to raise morale, and help those who needed it, but there was only so much we could do. The Death Eaters had a very different view on what was an acceptable punishment to us. Eventually, some of us had to go into hiding.

"By this point, it was only me left leading the group. Your mum had never returned after Easter, and Luna had been missing since Christmas, so it was getting hard to really do anything. Mostly, we were just focussed on staying alive, and more or less intact. It wasn't a school anymore, not really.

"And then your dad returned, and Ron and Hermione. Battered and bruised, but alive."

"And we brought war with us," said Harry sadly. It was something which had always troubled him – he knew that there would always have been a war, but it didn't lessen his guilt, and even if the situation was different, he would still carry the same guilt.

"We knew that the final horcrux was at Hogwarts, and by this point Riddle knew what we were hunting. We had no choice but to come. And so the Battle of Hogwarts came to be." Harry fell silent, and turned to gaze out of the window at the rapidly failing light. They sat in silence for a long time; the adults remembering that day, the youngsters mulling over everything they had learnt.

Finally, Harry began to speak again. "I died that day."

The silence that engulfed the room was deafening, it was absolute. No one spoke. Harry had only spoken of it once before, and Neville and McGonagall only knew that which had been relayed to them by Hermione one day.

"I learnt that day, in this office in fact, that I was also a horcrux – not intentionally made, but real nonetheless. We were destroying horcruxes, we always knew that we faced death, who was I to shy away from it? So I walked into the forest, and I let him kill me.

"I genuinely intended to let him kill me, and in doing so, I offered the same magical protection that my mother had given me to everyone. But it didn't work as I thought it would – he killed me, yes, but he was tied to my life too. And so I faced the choice, go on or come back.

"I guess you know my choice." He offered a weak smile, eyes nervously flicking from face to face. "And then Neville destroyed the final horcrux, and I killed Riddle." He finished rather lamely.

James stared at his father in disbelief. He had always believed that his father was a hero – but to discover that he really was, that he had genuinely saved the wizarding world… He found it impossible to wrap his mind around, and yet, he believed every word his father had said. But something was still bugging him.

"But, why?" he asked, looking up into the familiar face of his father. "Why you?"

His father laughed bitterly. "I asked myself the same thing hundreds of times. It was all because of the prophecy, and what it dictated. I couldn't walk away from any of this, because it was such a part of my life. I couldn't deny it, and I couldn't fight it. One of us would die either way."

Sighing, he sat up a little straighter, and looked at McGonagall. "Do you mind?" he asked, gesturing towards a corner cupboard.

"Not at all."

James watched, enthralled, as his father rose from his seat, and opened the cupboard. From it, he withdrew a shallow stone basin, covered in ancient runes, and filled with a swirling fluid that James wasn't sure whether it was gas or liquid. Harry then picked up his wand, and touched it to his forehead, withdrawing a strand of what appeared to be, gossamer.

As Harry prodded the surface of the fluid, an ethereal woman rose from the basin, and slowly revolved on the spot. Before beginning to speak:

* "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…

Born to those who have thrice defied him,

Born as the seventh month dies...

And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal,

But he will have power the Dark Lord knows not...

And either must die at the hand of the other

For neither can live while the other survives."

The five people watched silently as the mysterious woman slowly faded away. It was Neville who finally broke the silence.

"I never heard it in its entirety," he said, his voice wavering with a curious degree of emotion.

Harry placed a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder as he rose to place the basin back in the cupboard. James raised his eyebrows, silently asking for an explanation, but none was offered.

When his father had reclaimed his seat, he turned back to his son, and God-son, and, in a gesture strikingly similar to his son, raised his eyebrows. Teddy numbly shook his head, his mind too crowded with questions to find one significant enough to ask. James meanwhile laughed nervously, and asked the one prevailing question which he already knew the answer to.

"So you're not the heir of all four Hogwarts founders then?" His question finally cut the mounting tension, and the room dissolved into laughter.

"No, James. I'm afraid I'm not," harry responded.

Sensing that the conversation had reached its conclusion, at least for today, James and Teddy rose from their seats, and bid the others good-night as they made their way towards the exit.

James however, paused in the door, and turned back to his father.

"Is it, um, okay if I tell Ali and Matt all of this?" he asked hesitantly.

He was surprised however, when McGonagall laughed, and answered for Harry. "If you're anything like your father, you will regardless of what he says."

"That's not even half of the story, is it?" James asked Teddy as they made their way back to the common room.

Teddy looked down at the boy he considered a brother, and smiled. "No, not even close. We haven't even mentioned my parents' stories." He paused, and pursed his lips. "But it's enough. For now."

James nodded in silent agreement. Teddy was right, for now, it was enough.

Little did they know that back in McGonagall's office, a similar conversation was taking place.

"So when are you going to tell them the rest of the story?" Neville asked, nudging his friend.

Harry rolled his eyes, and turned to face him. "When I have a spare few days?" he joked.

McGonagall laughed gently, before becoming serious again. "I am sorry that this happened though, Harry."

"It wasn't your fault," he said, smiling at the woman who had done so much for him over the years. "If anything, it was mine. I should have told them, all of them, the truth a long time ago. But I just wanted them to have a normal childhood, one without the shadow of my past hanging over them. Maybe I made the wrong decision," he said with a shrug.

"Will you tell Al and Lily?" asked Neville.

Harry paused, unsure of his answer. On the one hand, he didn't want anything like this to happen again, but on the other hand, his children deserved a normal childhood. He turned to look once more at the portrait of his mentor, and it was to him he spoke his decision.

"No," he said, "I don't think I will. Researching my problems never did me any harm, and if they ask I'll tell them, of course." The portrait of Dumbledore smiled approvingly at him, and he spoke with more conviction.

"No. It's a story they need to discover for themselves."

* Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, page 741