Monday afternoon

Gryffindor Common Room

James flipped to the index of Advanced Potion-Making and rubbed his forehead, trying to dispel the headache growing there. He had his homework done for his next lesson, Herbology, but Fawley, Goldstein, and Viridian had all assigned a combination of extra reading, spell practice, and essays this morning, and he had two worksheets of Arithmancy calculations due tomorrow afternoon as well as an essay to finish for Transfiguration in the morning. And he had both Quidditch practice and prefect duty tonight. And tomorrow. And the night after that.

He sighed and returned to his notes, trying to remember what he was looking for. Mandrakes, that was it. Professor Fawley had them studying healing potions, specifically the concentration at which different ingredients morphed from ineffective to therapeutic to toxic. It was interesting but complex, and James couldn't stay focused. He kept thinking about the advice Cameron had given him last week: "Seems to me the fastest way to get her out of here is to do what she wants."

James glanced at his mother, sitting across the table from him and writing steadily. Uncle Ron had been right about helping her through the portrait hole as a way to annoy her. When James had offered his hand after lunch, she had given first his hand, then him a dirty look before swinging through on her own. Maybe Uncle Ron was right about the other stuff too, about earning his own way and not listening to other people's opinions and making the choices that would get him where he wanted to go.

James watched his mother write for a few minutes. Was this what she chose? Writing about Quidditch, instead of playing it? She had quit the Harpies at the height of her career, and despite a respectable collection of N.E.W.T.s, had not sought a position as a Healer or an Auror or with the Ministry or even as a teacher. Was she happy being a mum? Even now, with him being … difficult? She certainly didn't care what people thought of her being at Hogwarts. She had decided it was the best way to handle the situation and she did it.

Could he do that? Do the work for his lessons, learn leadership skills as Quidditch Captain and prefect, and ignore the opinions of others to accomplish his goals? Teddy had. There had been a lot of interest when Nymphadora Tonks's son and Harry Potter's godson joined the Aurors. Teddy had taken it in stride, working hard in the Academy and completing his requirements just like everyone else. James remembered the last week of summer, when he had gone with Teddy to visit his grandmother. Mrs. Tonks had fussed over both of them, and James had asked Teddy about it later, after they left. "Doesn't it bother you that she still fusses over you like you're a little kid?" "It used to," Teddy said. "Until I realized she does it not because she thinks I need it, but because she does."

James hadn't understood what Teddy meant at the time, but he thought maybe he did now. He had always thought of his mum as invincible, constant, that his petty misbehavior and unkind words just rolled off her since she always loved him, always forgave him. But if he had learned anything in the last ten days, it was that his mother was human, just like he was. She made mistakes and could feel hurt and angry and sad and scared. In fact, he had seen her display all those emotions since she came to Hogwarts.

James realized his quill was dripping ink in a large splotch and put it back in the inkwell. Maybe he would do what his mum wanted. Uncle Ron was right; if James wanted to be an Auror, it was smart to do the things that would help him accomplish his goal. He had earned his captaincy, and his prefect badge, and his O.W.L.s. His parents hadn't helped him any more than any interested mum or dad would. He was likely to be judged anyway, so he might as well make the comparison favorable.

Now, if he could just shake Ginny long enough to make plans for the trip to Hogsmeade this weekend….

()()()()

Tuesday afternoon

the Arithmancy classroom

Ginny sat beside James, watching him take notes as her mind swirled with numbers. She couldn't remember the last time she had been so confused, but James nodded every few minutes as if Professor Vector's words actually made sense. Ginny would have loved to write to Harry, but if she got caught in this lesson, there was no way she could magic herself out of it. She didn't even know this was magic—it could be Gobbledegook for all she understood.

Someone knocked on the door. Quills paused and necks craned as everyone tried to see who had interrupted.

"Mrs. Potter, your presence is requested," Professor Vector said.

Ginny turned to James, who shrugged. She left the classroom to find the Slytherin prefect James had covered for on Sunday night waiting in the hallway. She was tall and blonde and reminded Ginny oddly of Fleur.

"It's Lily," the girl said. "She's sick."

Ginny quickened her step. "What's wrong?"

"I think it might be … you know."

Ginny stared at her. No, she didn't know, which was why she was following this stranger with her perfectly draped robes and posh accent.

"She's locked herself in the lavatory, and she won't come out," the girl said, giving Ginny a significant look. "I think it might be…." Another delicate pause.

"Ah," Ginny said, taking a full breath again as thoughts of potion poisonings, artifact accidents, and charm catastrophes receded to the back corners of her mind. They walked down a flight of stairs.

"I tried to talk to her about it, but she told me to go away. She was crying, so I thought I'd come get you."

"Thank you—er, I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"Charlotte Greengrass-Rhodes."

"Ginny Weasley Potter," she answered, automatically introducing herself by both her maiden and married names as was common among magic-born witches. The wizarding world was a small community, and this helped people make connections.

"Yes, I know."

Ginny realized why Charlotte reminded her of Fleur. It wasn't her beauty, although she was attractive. It wasn't even her platinum blonde hair. It was that intimidating projection of confidence.

Scorpius was an only child, so…. "You're Daphne's daughter?"

"Yes."

They stopped in front of a lavatory. The door was open, but no crying could be heard.

"Thank you, Charlotte. It was thoughtful to come for me."

"Slytherins take care of their own," Charlotte said somewhat cooly.

"So Lily tells me." Ginny smiled. Charlotte didn't.

"Lily? It's Mum. Are you in here, love?"

"Mum?" Lily's tearful voice came from the far cubicle.

Ginny walked towards it. "Yes, it's me. What's the matter?"

Lily unlocked the door and flung herself into Ginny's arms. "Istartedmyperiod," Lily said in a rush.

"Okay," Ginny said calmly, stroking Lily's hair. "Do you have anything with you?" Ginny had given her a few pads to carry in her school bag just in case.

Lily nodded, face still buried in her mother's chest. "But—but I—"

"Need clean knickers?"

Lily nodded again.

"I'll walk you to your common room and you can change."

Lily sniffed, her arms still around Ginny's waist. "Can't you get me some?"

Ginny tugged on her braid. "Gryffindors aren't allowed in the Slytherin common room, remember?"

Lily raised her face. "Can't you conjure me a pair? I can't—" Her pink face turned crimson. "I can't be seen like this."

"Your robes are fine," Ginny said soothingly, turning her to make sure, but Lily shook her head frantically.

"I'm not leaving here until I have new knickers. Everyone will know!"

"No one is going to know," Ginny and Charlotte said together.

Ginny turned around in surprise. She thought the older girl had left.

Lily crossed her arms over her chest and set her jaw. Recognizing the look, Ginny conjured a pair of plain white knickers.

Lily took them without a word and shut herself in the cubicle again.

"What am I going to do for pads?" she said. "All I have is what you gave me last summer."

"I'll write to—"

"NO!" Lily shrieked, and a loud thump came from the other side, as if she had tried to get through the door without opening it first. "You can't tell Dad!"

"I'm not due for another two weeks," Charlotte said. "You can have mine and then pick some up in Hogsmeade this weekend to pay me back."

Lily remembered to open the door this time. "I can't buy pads in Hogsmeade," she whispered, now so pale her freckles stood out in sharp relief. "Everyone will know!"

"Unless you let your mum send you some from home, that's your only choice," Charlotte said reasonably. "Madame Branstone keeps a whole cabinet full of them, but she won't supply you all year."

"I'll say they're for me," Ginny said. "That will get you through this week, and then when I get home, I'll send enough for the rest of term. Okay?"

"You won't tell Dad I started? Or James or Al, either? Or—"

"I won't tell any of the boys," Ginny said before Lily could run down the list of her male cousins. "It will be fine, Lils. There's nothing to be embarrassed about—it's a normal part of growing up."

Lily looked highly skeptical.

"Come on," Charlotte said. "We'll go get them now, while everyone's still in lessons. You can say you went to the hospital wing and Madame Branstone gave you a potion." She smiled at Lily.

"I'll check in with you later, okay?" Ginny said, hugging Lily again.

But Ginny didn't follow. She stared at the door Lily and Charlotte had left through, lost in thought. When Lily celebrated her thirteenth birthday and returned to school without starting her period, Ginny had resigned herself to not being able to share this milestone with her daughter. Yet here they were, together not because Lily was home, but because Ginny was at Hogwarts.

And she had James to thank for it.

()()()()

Tuesday afternoon

the Arithmancy corridor

James stood at the balcony between staircases, oblivious to the bumping and jostling of his fellow pupils as everyone streamed away from the classrooms in an end-of-day rush. Ginny had not returned to class before the lesson ended and would be expecting to meet him in the Great Hall, which meant downstairs. But Ce—she would be upstairs in the common room since she always dropped her books off before heading to dinner, and he wanted to ask her something. James bit the inside of his lip, looking from one staircase to the other. Maybe if he hurried, he could get to the common room first, catch her before she met up with her friends, and walk her to the Great Hall. Ginny didn't need to know he hadn't come straight from lessons.

James had just turned towards the ascending stairs when someone called his name.

"Potter, wait up!"

It was Derrick. James blew out a breath and waited while the Slytherin captain cut his way across the tide of pupils curving downstairs en mass. He'd never catch up now.

"Listen, I just found out," Derrick said breathlessly. "The Hufflepuffs have practice today. Now, in fact—four o'clock. Can you make it? I have to finish Fawley's essay before dinner because my Astronomy group is meeting tonight."

James gave the rising stairs a longing look before turning his back on them. "All right. But you're taking Ravenclaw's. Otherwise, I'll never catch up."

Derrick had merged with the crowd as soon as James agreed, but he saw a hand wave in acknowledgement above the others' heads.

()()()()

Tuesday, late afternoon

the Quidditch pitch

James and Ginny leaned against the railing, watching the Hufflepuffs flying warm-up laps.

"Do you miss it?" he said.

"Playing Quidditch? Yes. Do I regret leaving? No."

"Why did you quit?" He squinted into the late afternoon sun, studying the Chasers above them, hoping she would give him a real answer, not the pat answers he'd seen printed in the Prophet's archives.

"I wanted you," Ginny said simply.

James looked up. She had never said that before. At least, not so directly. "But you were young, only twenty-three. And really good. You could have played for another decade, at least."

"Maybe. That's what the critics said. But I knew I wanted more than one child, I knew I didn't want to have them back-to-back, and I knew I didn't want to have babies into my thirties. And—" She hesitated, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "And I was deeply in love with your dad, and I wanted to give him a family."

He made a face but said nothing about Harry. "You couldn't have known you'd have me, though. Me, James. I could have been awful."

She smiled. "Some days you were. Some days, especially when Al was born so soon after you despite our plans, I just wanted to chuck the two of you in your cots and fly until I ran out of atmosphere. But then one of you would laugh, or reach for me, or your eyes would light up at something ordinary—an owl flying through the window, or the way rain splattered off the gutter at the side of the house—and I knew I was exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I was meant to do. I always wanted to be a mother, James, and you and Al and Lily are the joy of my life. Quidditch was fun, but I wanted more."

James felt the prick of guilt. He certainly hadn't been the joy of her life lately.

"But you were really good," he repeated. "Rookie of the Year for the whole League, Harpies' Player of the Season … there was even talk about you playing for England again, contending for the next World Cup, and you just quit. No injuries, no disagreements with management, just an announcement of your retirement."

Ginny turned to face him. "How do you know all this? You've never seemed interested in my career before."

James said nothing for a moment, noting this was the fifth time he'd seen Murphy pass the Quaffle instead of making a goal himself. "When we stopped off at the Prophet on the way home from school last year, one of the blokes said he'd seen the last Gryffindor match and I played Chaser almost as well as my mum. I wanted to know exactly how good that was."

"Oh, James…."

James saw her reach for him, but he kept his shoulders tense, his jaw set, and she let her hand drop.

"You really wanted me more than a World Cup?" The idea was … incredulous. Extraordinary. Empowering.

"More than a thousand World Cups. More than all the awards and accolades in the world." Busy looking anywhere else, James was startled when his mother wrapped her arms around him, pulled him down to her, and ruffled his hair. "Fame and fans are fickle, here today and gone tomorrow, but mothers are forever and ever and ever!"

"Mum! Mum, geroff!"

Sometimes you could really tell that Ginny was the only girl in a family of boys. James squirmed and twisted but she held firm, pinning one arm behind his back and kissing him anywhere she could reach until they were both breathless and laughing.

James straightened up and glanced around. He smoothed his robes before leaning back against the railing in a casual pose, but no one was in sight other than the specks of Hufflepuffs high in the sky. There was something else … and since she had answered his Quidditch question honestly….

"Do you still love Dad?"

"What? Of course I do! Whatever makes you ask that?"

He shrugged. "You said—just a minute ago, you said you were deeply in love with him, and—"

"Well, I admit the burning desire to have his baby has faded a bit with the decades," Ginny said dryly.

"And—" James plunged on despite the color in his cheeks— "and you fought a lot this summer."

"Mmm." Ginny stared over the Quidditch pitch, green and pristine in the early pre-season.

James had the distinct impression she was censoring her words.

"We couldn't agree on what to do about you."

"Why not?"

"Your dad thought we were giving you too much freedom, that we should scale it back since you weren't being very responsible. I, on the other hand, thought something was bothering you and knew you'd never tell us if we didn't give you some space. You're like him in that regard, even though he can't see it."

James turned and faced the pitch again but stood close enough that she could touch him if she wanted.

"Is that what was bothering you? Why I stopped playing Quidditch?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Some."

"Do you want to play professionally after Hogwarts? I thought you wanted to be an Auror."

"Maybe."

Ginny bumped his shoulder. "Maybe Quidditch, or maybe the Academy?"

"Yes."

She reached out and brushed his hair back. The sun had sunk behind the stands, and it was hard to read her expression. "Your dad would be proud of you either way. Uncle Ron too."

"And you?" Over the last two weeks, he had realized he did care what his mother thought about him. Rather a lot, in fact.

She sighed. "Speaking as your mother, Jamie, I would prefer you choose a profession that did not put your life at risk on a daily basis."

"Quidditch it is, then." He grinned at her confusion. "Come on, Mum, the Quidditch season is only from November through May. That's five whole months with no danger at all!"

()()()()

Thursday morning

Hogwarts Castle

"This way," Ginny said, leading James away from Gryffindor Tower. "I want to show you something."

She had done this several times since the day she showed him the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. He had seen the spot where Dumbledore had fallen, heard her memory of spending the night in the Great Hall when Sirius broke into the school on Halloween, visited the thestral herd (which he couldn't see, but Ginny could) and by following her instructions, found the dormitory where his grandfather James had carved his and his grandmother's initials into the post of his bed.

Curious as to what she would show him this time, James turned and followed her to the entrance to the Astronomy Tower. Ginny paused, looked around, walked from one side of the hallway to another, then stopped.

"They've changed the pictures, but I think this is where your uncle Bill was attacked by Greyback on the night Dumbledore was killed."

"Where were you?" James said quietly.

She moved several feet away. "About here. Dodging spells from a Death Eater who would become my Defense Against the Dark Arts professor."

"Dad wasn't here, though, was he? He and Dumbledore were—" James remembered what his mother had told him in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and the way his dad always described what he, Uncle Ron, and Aunt Hermione had done the last year of the war: we searched for what we needed to destroy Voldemort. "Were they looking for a Horcrux?"

"Yes. It was well-guarded, and one of the protections was a poisonous potion. Dumbledore drank it and was weak when they returned to Hogwarts."

James walked down the hallway, trying to imagine his mother at—his forehead wrinkled. "How old were you?"

"Fifteen."

Merlin. That was younger than he was now. His mother, as a fifteen-year-old girl, had stood in this hallway and fought fully qualified wizards—wizards practicing dark magic!—while her oldest brother lay injured and bleeding on the ground behind her. James couldn't imagine it. Couldn't imagine dark magic in Hogwarts, couldn't imagine continuing to fight while Al or Lily was hurt.

"I thought—" She took a deep breath. "I was so scared he was dead. Then we didn't know what effect it would have, being bitten by a werewolf that wasn't transformed…."

James stared. Uncle Bill had always had scars, but James had never thought of him as anything other than friendly and easy-going, with the coolest collection of magical artifacts. But that night—everyone must have wondered.

Ginny gave a shaky laugh. "That was the night we finally accepted Fleur into the family. We—well, Mum and I, at least—didn't like her very much at first."

"What happened?"

"She stood up for Bill," Ginny said simply. "They were engaged, but Mum thought she would want to cancel the wedding. Fleur said the scars just proved he was brave, and that she was good-looking enough for both of them."

James grinned. "That sounds like Aunt Fleur."

"Yes, doesn't it?" Ginny said dryly.

"What happened with the Horcrux? Did Dad destroy it?"

"It was a fake," Ginny said. "Your dad was so upset. Dumbledore dead, Snape and Malfoy escaped, Hagrid's hut burned down, Bill injured—all for a fake Horcrux. We all thought we had failed. We didn't understand that Dumbledore had planned his death with Professor Snape."

James knew that story; Harry had made sure they all knew the truth about Snape, both good and bad. "Do you know where Uncle Fred died?"

"Yes."

He hesitated, then asked, "Will you show me?"

Ginny looked at him for a moment, then began walking.

They navigated the castle in silence, climbing stairs and turning corners until Ginny stopped in a corridor on the seventh floor. James passed this spot almost every day as he walked from Gryffindor Tower to other parts of the castle.

"Somewhere here. There was a curse from outside, the wall exploded, and Fred was thrown."

"Why did you do it?"

"What?" Ginny looked at James as if only just seeing him.

"Why did you fight? You were just a kid."

For some reason, Mum stared at a blank stretch of wall halfway down the corridor, across from an old tapestry. "Because it was the right thing to do. Because your dad saved my life when he was only twelve years old and I owed him. Because I loved him. Because Ron followed Harry into everything, and I wanted to help them. Because Bill was scarred, and George lost an ear, and Hermione—brilliant, gifted Hermione—was considered worthless. Because they killed my brother. Because the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." Her eyes shone.

"I'm sorry," James said immediately, putting one arm around her. "I didn't mean to make you sad."

"It's all right," she said, blinking the tears away with a smile. "It's just hard to remember sometimes. But this—" She reached up and laid one hand on each side of James's face. "This is what we fought for. That the children who came after us would be able to attend Hogwarts and learn in peace. All the magical children. For Muggles to be respected and unharmed by wizards. To see the Houses now, the way you mix together and socialize, it's good. We made too many assumptions that were never corrected because we didn't get to know one another. Every House has strengths and weaknesses. Every person has the ability to make good choices, regardless of where they're Sorted."

James looked down at his mother and saw not just the mum who loved him and nagged him and taught him, but the girl … the sister … the friend … the woman who was brave and spirited and compassionate and determined. He hugged her, squeezing tightly as a swell of pride filled him. Ginny Weasley Potter deserved her reputation as a powerful witch and heroine, and she was his mother.

a/n: Whew! I won't bore you with the details of my RL, but suffice to say I have been very busy over the last ten days. Thanks for your patience :D We'll wrap up this story with an epilogue, which I will do my best to get to you in a week's time, but no promises. For those of you who wondered, Ginny did not prank her daughter. Ginny's explanation of why she fought in the war is, of course, a quote from Edmund Burke that I modified to gender-neutral language.