Harry and his family spent the drive home from Dudley's in near silence. Ginny was still fuming and though he could tell his children were dying to ask what everything Ginny said to Vernon meant, they didn't dare while their mother was this upset.
As they pulled into the driveway of their quaint little cottage, Harry announced that he had some things to catch up on at work. Ginny gave him a look that was half scathing and half concerned. He remarked to himself how beautiful she looked, with the golden sunset lighting her face, and with that familiar expression of love and exasperation. Soft wrinkles had begun to form around her eyes, and Harry knew that Ginny spent time agonizing over them in the mirror, but he thought they only added beauty to her face.
Lily was tugging at his hand and he knelt down in front of her, hoping she wasn't about to ask him the questions he knew she wanted to.
"Daddy, I love you," she said, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. "Try not to stay at work too late."
Harry smiled and hugged her tightly before kissing her lightly on the forehead. James and Albus were looking apprehensively at him from the doorway of the house. For a moment, he considered staying home with them, but just waved and turned on the spot, Disapparating to the Ministry.
He really didn't have all that much to do at work. Rather than catching up, he found himself getting ahead on paperwork. Around nine-o-clock he decided to take a walk around the halls of the Ministry to stretch his legs. The Ministry was always so quiet at this hour, and he liked the relief it offered from its usually frantic pace. His lone footsteps echoing through the magnificent halls calmed him, and helped him think.
He was surprised to see Hermione's office door was open and emitting a soft light. He stood for a moment in the open doorway, watching one of his oldest friends as she pored over a stack of parchment on her desk. She was bent so low over it she appeared to him as nothing more than a pile of bushy hair.
"Got any basilisk fangs?" he asked and her head snapped up. It had become something of a morbid joke between them after the war. They at first had trouble talking about everything that had happened, and were reluctant even to tell the Weasley family about it, but one night, about a month after the last battle, Ron, Harry and Hermione were assigned the task by Mrs. Weasley of cleaning out the broom shed at the Burrow. It was stupid really: They found an old letter that Ron had apparently written to Hermione years ago, confessing his feelings in a childlike scrawl, hidden under a pile of boards. Harry read it aloud, laughing, while Hermione tried without success to take it seriously.
"We ought to frame this," Harry had said as he finished.
"More like destroy it," Ron grumbled. "Anyone got a Basilisk fang?"
They stood there for a moment, Ron just as shocked as the other two that he had said it. They stood staring at each other, silent. And then, all at once, they began to laugh. They laughed harder than any of them had in years; they laughed until they lost all track of time, falling into each other, collapsing as one into a mess on the floor, tears streaming from their eyes.
And then, it was okay. All of it. It was over for them now, finally. It was over. From that day on, they had no trouble talking about it with each other. An understanding had passed between them.
Hermione smiled now and beckoned for him to enter.
"What are you doing here so late? I thought you were going to visit little me?" Hermione still couldn't get over the fact that Harry's infamous cousin had named his daughter after her. She would be eternally amused by the fact.
"Yeah, I did," he said simply.
Hermione peered at him searchingly for a moment. He liked having lifelong friends, he really did, but he hated the fact that she and Ron could read him so easily.
"What happened? Did you fight?" She clapped her hand over her mouth suddenly. "No. Your aunt and uncle?"
Harry nodded, not really surprised at how easily she has just deduced the exact reason for his coming into work so late with such a melancholy mood.
"It was pretty bad. Dudley told them about Hermione being a witch and then Ginny went psycho on Vernon. That part was pretty fun, actually, but the kids heard the whole thing. I'm not looking forward to the questions they're going to ask. Ginny even told him about how I died and came back to life."
Hermione looked appalled. "But you haven't even told them about your part in the war!"
"I know," Harry said. "And I was hoping I wouldn't have to yet."
Over the years, Harry had tried to keep his family away from the limelight and had partially succeeded. There were enough wards around the house to keep reporters and the simply curious away, and Harry rarely visited public wizarding places with his children. It wasn't as if they never left the house together—they spent a lot of time at the Burrow, and at Ron and Hermione's, and often ventured into Muggle cities, but they usually avoided Diagon Alley and the like. If the children needed to go, a Weasley usually took them.
He couldn't shield them completely of course. They had seen various newspaper articles and magazines, and had heard various mentions of the war. They had even, at times, heard strangers in the street talking about Harry Potter, but he always evaded questions about it. It looked like now he would be forced to come clean.
"You know," Hermione said thoughtfully, "James will being going off to Hogwarts in September. It's not like you can send him there without telling him. Don't you remember how you felt going there when everyone else knew more about you than you did? Maybe it's not such a bad thing that you've sort of been thrust into this."
Harry shrugged. "I guess, but I really wasn't ready to tell Al and Lily."
"Oh, don't tell Lily," Hermione said, suddenly teary. "Please don't tell her yet." Harry completely understood. He didn't want anything to blight that perfectly pure existence either.
"I won't tell her everything," he comforted Hermione. "But if she asks, I'm not going to lie."
Hermione looked slightly appeased.
"Go home, Harry," she said rather sternly, turning back to her parchment. She had become quite a mother, he realized, and Harry knew enough to obey.
At home, Harry found Ginny working on a Quidditch article for the Daily Prophet. She looked up at him as he entered the house with a strange expression. "How are you doing?" she asked, concerned.
"I'm fine," he answered. "It's been almost twenty years, Ginny. They don't bother me any more."
"Good," she said, though she didn't look completely convinced. "They're asking questions," she added.
Harry sighed. "Yeah, I figured they would. You think it's time to tell James? He is going to Hogwarts in September, you know. We can't shield him from it forever."
"You've been talking to Hermione," she said. Why was he so easy to read? He had to get some new people in his life who didn't know him so well.
"I heard them talking to each other, comparing notes. Did you know that you were Minister for Magic at sixteen? And that you led an army of raging hippogriffs against a Muggle army?"
Harry let out a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Come on," Ginny said, standing up. "I'm sure he's still awake."
Harry and Ginny climbed the stairs quietly to find James completely awake, sitting up in his bedroom, reading Quidditch through the Ages by moonlight.
Harry knocked softly on the doorframe and walked in. Ginny stayed leaning in the doorway.
"Hey James," Harry said, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Can't sleep?"
James shook his head. "Dad, I know you don't like to talk about the war, but sometimes I feel like everybody in the world knows more about my Dad than I do. Teddy told me you were a hero, and I don't even know why. You don't have to tell me everything, but mum said you actually died! Is that true?"
There was heartbreaking concern on James' features and it made him look much older to Harry than ten. Maybe keeping this from him for so long hadn't been such a good idea after all.
"Sort of," Harry answered, struggling for the words to explain to this little boy the horrors of war. Then he remembered that he himself had only been a few months older than James when he learned the truth of his parents' murders and the history of Voldemort. He had been less than a year older than him when he fought Voldemort for the first, well second time. Despite all this, he suddenly understood fully, and completely, why Dumbledore had been so reluctant to tell him about the prophecy.
Harry took a deep breath and began.
"No way," Al said proudly, with awe, at the tales of Harry's first few years of Hogwarts. He supposed the way Harry told it made it seem like an adventure, because that's how he viewed those years now compared with what was to come.
As he told his son of Cedric's death, of Voldemort's rebirth from his own blood, and of his escape from the Death Eaters that night, he watched horror dawn on the little boy's face. It wasn't an adventure anymore.
"Are you sure you want to hear this?" he asked. James looked unsure but urged him to continue.
His expression grew angry as Harry told him about Umbridge and his persecution by the Ministry and the other students at Hogwarts. He's eyes grew red and a little wet as Harry finally explained the origins of James' middle name, Sirius. They grew fearful as he told him about the prophecy, and determined as he spoke of his own determination to finish it or die trying. He watched the conflicting emotions he himself had once felt as they now passed across his son's face as the tale went on, through the discovery of the Horcruxes, and through Dumbledore's death.
"And that's why Albus has such a stupid name?" he asked.
Harry grinned. "It's a name to be proud of, but just wait 'til you hear where his middle name came from."
It was strange to be reliving all of this so many years later, sitting in his son's cheerful Quidditch paraphernalia adorned bedroom. He had never told the story from start to finish like this, and it was almost liberating, though it just didn't feel right. Most of him just wished he could label it all as "The Past" and file it away somewhere without ever having to deal with it again. That wasn't the way life worked though, he learned long ago.
Ginny stayed leaning in the doorway while Harry spoke of the year he spent with Ron and Hermione, searching for Horcruxes, and as he kept James riveted with the story of breaking into the Ministry, and into Gringotts.
"You didn't really escape on a dragon, did you? Uncle Charlie told me that once and I didn't believe him."
Harry nodded and laughed at the amazed look on his son's face. "Wicked."
"Things get pretty bad now, though," he warned.
"You mean it gets worse?" James looked disbelieving, and a little scared.
Harry didn't want to continue, but he had come this far. He told all about finding the Diadem, about the final battle, about how Uncle Fred had died, and Teddy's Parents. He told about how brave his extended family was, and how valiantly they fought. Ginny left the doorway when his story reached the edge of the forest.
He had told her this part exactly four days after the battle, and she had wept like he never saw her weep before or since. Finally, she stood up, threatened him with her wand, and said: "Harry James Potter, if you ever do anything so stupidly brave and foolishly selfless again, I swear I'll be the one to kill you myself." Harry had realized in that moment, with complete certainty, that he was going to spend the rest of his life with her. He knew now that she had no interest in hearing that part of the story again even after all these years.
Tears were falling from James' eyes unashamedly now. Harry tried to keep the story as simple as possible, but he played up the part where he won, not because he was proud, but because he was trying to desperately overshadow the bad parts in James' mind.
When he finished, when he finally finished the seven year tale, James just looked at him for a full minute. Then, he crawled across his bed to where his father was sitting, and in a way that would mortify any ten year old boy, he crawled into his father's lap and wrapped his arms around him. Harry could feel his son shaking with tears and he did what he could to comfort him, hugging him tightly to his chest.
Finally, James pulled away from his father enough to look into his face. "Dad, you are by far the stupidest, most bravest, most amazing Dad anyone has ever had."
"Your mother said something very similar in her wedding vows you know," Harry answered grinning.
James laughed a very wet laugh.
"I'm glad you won, Dad," James said, more quietly, and Harry held him until he fell asleep in his arms.
Shutting the door softly behind him, Harry exited his eldest son's room to find Ginny leaning against the wall, crying soft tears.
Without a word, he pulled her into his chest and comforted her in much the same way he had comforted James.
"I didn't think that would be so hard," she whispered.
"Neither did I."
They stood like that for a long while before Ginny whispered something about making tea. Harry decided to check on Al before joining her. He must be sleeping by now, he thought, but he just felt like he needed to see him sleeping, peacefully unaware of the story he would no doubt hear in the morning.
"Dad?" the boy whispered, as Harry opened the door. He too was sitting awake in bed, but he had no book in his hand. He was just staring into the darkness, his brilliant green eyes alit with moonlight.
"You're still awake?" Harry asked, coming into his room fully.
"Yeah. Can I ask you something?"
Harry sighed. There was no way he was going to tell the story again tonight.
"What is it, Al?"
"What mum said earlier, was it true?"
"Yeah, it was."
To Harry's surprise, light tears started streaming down his cheeks. How could he not tell him now?
"Al, what is it?"
"How could those people treat you like that? They locked you in a cupboard and starved you and hurt you? Didn't they know they were supposed to love you?"
Harry found himself speechless with surprise. He had been certain Al had been referring to the part about him dying. He had not expected him to dwell on this: James hadn't even asked him about it.
"I'm sorry you had to hear all of that, Al," he said finally. "But you know, I wasn't with them for very long, and I've now found more people who love me than I ever could have hoped for."
"But Mum said you didn't even know how to be loved. Does that mean that you don't know that I love you?"
"Of course I do," Harry answered. He really hadn't been prepared for this. He didn't know what to say. Telling the story of Voldemort had been easy in comparison.
"The Dursleys were, well, they were awful. They did all the things your mother said they did. They didn't like me because I could do magic, and they were scared of magic because it was something they couldn't understand. When I was eleven, Hagrid came to take me away and from that moment on, I had a new life. I had friends and family who loved me, and I knew they loved me. It was a little hard to accept at first, but it didn't take long. You can't spend too much time with the Weasleys without feeling absolutely certain that you're loved, especially with your Grandmother around.
"You can't change the past, Al. But you know, while I wish my parents hadn't died, and had been able to raise me themselves, without the Weasleys I wouldn't be who I am. I had to know what it was to be unloved to truly appreciate what is was to be loved in the end. If I hadn't grown up with the Dursleys, I might not know how truly blessed I am to have such a wonderful family."
"Don't you hate them, though?" Al asked quietly.
Harry considered the question and answered honestly. "You know, Al, I don't. I've…well I've known people who were intentionally evil; evil in the truest form. Vernon and Petunia are not evil people. They are pathetically enraged toward people who are different than them, and it's actually kind of sad. You know, I actually pity them, you see, because of who they are: they'll never know love like I do. Their lives will never be as complete as mine. And besides, do you know one of the reasons my aunt treated me so badly?"
Al shook his head and Harry paused for effect.
Finally he leaned toward Al conspiratorially and mock whispered: "She was jealous that she couldn't be a witch."
Al offered a small laugh and looked at least partially comforted. Harry hugged him before standing up to leave.
"I'm surprised, Al," he said against his better judgment, but curiosity go the better of him. "I expected you to ask about the war."
"Oh, no," he said, his eyes wide. "I don't want to know about that until I'm older."
Harry laughed and left the room. Really, how had he gotten so lucky?
Lily, thankfully, had fallen asleep and Harry stood looking at her for a long while before Ginny quietly entered the room and stood beside him.
"I wondered where you'd got to," she whispered. "I was worried Al had asked you about the war too."
"Oh no," Harry said grinning. "He doesn't want to know until he's older."
Ginny buried her face in Harry's shoulder to suppress her giggles.
"She's so beautiful," he said after a while, looking back at his daughter.
As he stood there, with an arm around his incredible wife, looking down at the sleeping form of his perfect daughter, Harry never felt so thankful that he knew what it was to love, and to be loved in return.
A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed!
This story pretty much takes a few well worn story ideas and combines them into one story. I realize there is no shortage of stories with these sort of themes, but hopefully my take on them is original enough to be interesting.
Next up: Harry's not quite through with the Dursleys yet (the next chapter's called Reckoning if that gives you any hint), and Petunia still has a few secrets.