Chapter Text
18: Grave Days
Harry wondered what James saw when he looked at him. Some sort of imposter? A sick joke? It was like looking into a funhouse mirror.
James snatched his hand out of Harry’s. They were both sweating.
Bereft, Harry looked between his parents who couldn’t bring themselves to meet his eye. His back ached. ‘Can we sit?’ He asked. They looked at him in disbelief. They were in their early twenties; Harry was not, and had been gallivanting about the country all day.
The living room was mildewed, and the sofas were a brownish colour that might have been anything in a past life. Harry held his wand loosely as they journeyed downstairs and elected the kitchen table instead. There was still a thick layer of grime and dust but at least less risk of personal infestation.
Lily’s willow wand bent under the strain of her grip, her face as sallow as the whiteness of her knuckles. James’s face was mottled in what Harry presumed was an unattractive melding of stress, anger and fear. His eyes were black in the half light.
Harry drew aside his jacket and pressed his shoulders to the back of his chair.
A muscle jumped in James’s jaw. ‘I’d offer you tea, but…’ the sentence wilted.
‘I won’t hold it against you.’ Harry said with a twitch of his lips and a rush of blood in his ears.
‘Why are you here?’ Lily asked.
The Vow did nothing to his body. ‘Because of you,’ Harry said.
‘To kill us?’
‘No.’
‘For our son?’
‘Well, in a sense—’
‘What’s the point of taking an Unbreakable Vow if you skirt around our questions?’ James said loudly, thumping his hand against the table. An insect skittered away to the living room.
Harry looked at him.
‘My name is Harry Potter.’ He said evenly. ‘I am your son, and this is your house. Lord Voldemort came here on Halloween night and killed you both.’
James and Lily stared at him. ‘That’s not possible,’ Lily said quietly. ‘You’re—you’re double our age.’
‘Yes.’
He wondered the mental loops you might be taken on when that was what you settled on rather than your own death.
‘We’re not dead.’ James said after a long pause.
‘No. You’re not anymore, at least. And you’re not the first to come back either. We’re looking into it.’
‘How did you find us? How did you know to come here?’
Harry considered not telling the truth for half a second, thinking of blood magic and how his parents were still in the middle of a war. His throat tightened in warning, like a child’s hand was trying to strangle him. The Vow.
‘I didn’t come here looking for you.’ Harry said truthfully. ‘I wanted to get away from it all. Everything going on. And I hadn’t visited in a while.’
‘Clearly,’ James grunted, looking at a decaying lump on the kitchen side which might have once been a load of bread.
‘I think I might have had an idea, maybe… that you would be here. Somewhere in the back of my head.’
‘How long has it been?’ Lily asked. She had not spoken much, and her eyes bored into Harry’s. ‘You said You-Know-Who came on Halloween night, but when—’
‘I remember.’ James said suddenly. ‘I told you to run away, Lily, and then he laughed, and then…’
‘Oh.’ Said Lily. ‘The green.’
‘The green.’ Harry looked down to his lap. His hands were shaking as he held them.
‘Did you—die?’
‘No,’ Harry said with the tightness in his throat again. He ignored the discomfort and the memories of rotting leaves pressing into his cheek and nostrils. ‘And Voldemort is gone now. Properly.’
‘Gone,’ James breathed. Lily stared at her husband in disbelief, her hand going to her mouth.
‘Oh Harry,’ Lily said. ‘You—you’re our boy, aren’t you? And we weren’t there?’
‘You weren’t. But it’s okay.’
They looked so young, like this. So scared and drawn, tired beyond expected and far too young, really, to even have a child. Harry couldn’t imagine having James arrive at twenty, all the stress of keeping him alive for long enough to see the morning. Of wondering whether he would end up like Vernon Dursley in the quiet rattling spaces in the back of his mind.
Harry had dealt with the spectre of war in the early days of his children’s lives, and he didn’t think he would ever quite escape it. But James and Lily had been the ones to help cast the shadow of it.
James looked at Harry, unreadable and unsettling. ‘How many years has it been?’ He asked.
He didn’t want to tell them. ‘I think—somewhere around thirty-eight.’
Lily swore.
‘You’re double our age,’ James said faintly. ‘You’re our son and you’re double our age—’
It was the first time James had acknowledged Harry was his child. Harry felt a fizzing sensation in his gut.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said, at a loss.
‘What do we do?’ Lily said in a high tone. ‘Our house is—gone, is this… we don’t have jobs, we’ve got no family, no friends—’
She looked stricken.
‘Peter,’ James said. ‘Peter,’ he repeated, looking at Harry. ‘What did they do, the Death Eaters, You-Know-Who… did they—did they get him?’
Harry wanted to lie, desperately. He wanted to save them the heartache of betrayal by a friend of ten years. He wanted to raise Peter Pettigrew to a pedestal in their eyes without bringing him down to the cellar he belonged in. And he wanted to blame it on the Vow, but he knew he could get around it. But they would find out, be it from Harry, from a rampaging Sirius, or—with the way things were going—Pettigrew himself.
‘They got him, yes,’ Harry said, ‘but he wasn’t harmed. He’d been working for Voldemort.’
Harry didn’t see their faces; didn’t see the horror he knew he would find. ‘Wormtail was the mole?’
‘Yes. The spy.’ Harry said blandly.
‘How long for?’ Lily asked. Harry looked up at his mother, her eyes glistening wet.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know why?’ James looked quite devastated. Harry tried to imagine how he would feel or react if he found out Ron had willingly sent his wife and children to their deaths with no forewarning. It was unconscionable.
‘I’m not sure. I didn’t exactly—speak with him. There’s a much larger story but I don’t think now’s the time to tell you. There’s too much is going on.’
Harry could see the longing in both their eyes, but they too seemed to understand more knowledge would overwhelm them. Harry couldn’t imagine having to explain how the prophecy ended up to them.
Cloying rot filled his nose as Harry stared across the table. It was the house decaying around them all.
‘I think we should leave here. Maybe—a café?’
James shifted. ‘I don’t know if I’d like to be around muggles now.’ Lily looked his way.
Unbreakable Vow or not Harry could tell they didn’t want things between them to go south. He could hardly blame them for the logic to fail to overpower their emotions. He certainly wouldn’t let his guard down if any of his children appeared before him ranting about resurrections.
An idea, macabre though it was, drifted across Harry’s mind.
‘I could show you the churchyard. If you want. If it’ll help.’
James shuddered a little. ‘I think—’
Lily gritted her teeth. ‘We can check if they’re real, James. The graves. That’s where we are, isn’t it?’ The panic of quick acceptance earlier seemed to have faded a little from them both. The surrealness of the situation had caught up with them once more and the need for logic had passed back into their eyes. To make sure; to make certain.
Harry nodded.
And they walked out of the house that threatened to crumble, out into the jungle of a garden that twisted itself in knots around the fence and the garden gate. A light snow began, barely settling on the ground or leaves a whisper of cold on their noses. Harry turned silently at the end of the path and held his wand out to his parents, handle turned towards them.
‘Goodwill gesture.’ Harry told them quietly. After a glance to each other, James pocketed it. Harry hoped they wouldn’t turn on him, but even as the thought crossed his mind the Vow crooned somewhere in his chest at his compliance.
It was a short walk to the church and the barest beginnings of dusk; the moon had long risen in the sky with the bitterness of a January frost. Harry avoided the shifting War Memorial, and made sure they did not come within sight of Bathilda Bagshot’s cottage. He did not want more questions that would lead to more non-answers.
Through the kissing gate, past the crumbling graves, across the path—
Before the three of them stood two of their number’s grave. It was as clean as the day Harry had first arrived, perhaps as clean as when it was first carved. The muggles likely thought Harry was here every morning and night, tending to the marble until it shone.
The white carnations and red roses Harry had placed over Christmas had begun to wilt despite the charms he had placed on them at Molly Weasley’s wise instruction. Despite it, the red and white was still vivid against the melting snowflakes and dying grass around them.
‘Are they from you?’ James asked quietly, staring beyond the flowers themselves.
‘Yes.’ Harry said, looking between them. James did not reply, but instead let out a puff of air which floated away, visible, with the breeze.
Lily moved forward, wand raised. A surge of panic and fear struck though Harry and his hand went up and out without thought. ‘Don’t—’
His parents looked at him questioningly. ‘Don’t damage them. Please.’
They stared, and Lily offered him a small nod. Harry didn’t quite have the energy to think about why he was now so attached to the headstone.
Harry’s throat was dry as Lily began her charmwork. ‘She’s better at wards than me,’ James said nonchalantly.
‘Oh,’ said Harry.
Perhaps ten minutes passed in the cold. At some point James remembered Harry did not have a wand, and cast a warming charm on him which made the experience far more bearable.
Harry knew there would be nothing charmed on the stone other than those to keep them fresh and new, impervious to nature. Even so, it took time for Lily, and therefore James, to come to the same conclusion and leave them alone.
‘Well,’ Lily said, rising from her crouch, ‘I’m not the best person for the job, but I think Professor Dumbledore’s taught me enough to know that there’s nothing else short of well—digging it all up.’
‘No thank you,’ Harry said lightly, though he doubted there was anything else down there. James, too, looked ill at the thought.
The three of them stood staring at each other. What to do now? Where to go? Was Harry to take them into work, to lock them up next-door to Sirius? Was he to take them to the Room of Requirement? How could he explain the multitude of deaths, the order of death, the manner of death to everyone?
Thrust out before him, James’ shaking hand held out Harry’s wand, handle first, like he had done before. Harry thanked him and watched as darkness was settling gently around them with only the reflective glow of marble to stave it.
A quiet sniffing noise came from Harry’s right. His vision unblurred as he looked over, and found his mother looking back at him, face flushed with emotion and tears welling in tired eyes.
‘Oh Harry—’
She swept him to her, shorted than him by more than he imagined but with a better embrace than he would ever have thought of.
‘I’m sorry for leaving you—’ she was muttering into his shoulder as her own trembled. Harry stared blankly over her head at the tombstone of the woman he held.
James’ hand grasped Harry’s shoulder tightly as he stood apart from the circle his wife and son had formed, and for some reason it was the moment Harry began to cry hot, bubbling tears that fogged up his glasses and blocked his nose.
‘Ah, sorry,’ Harry kept mumbling sniffing heavily. Lily drew back and wiped her wet face roughly. James drew her to his side and pressed his face into the side of her head, face buried in her hair and eyes screwed shut.
‘Come on,’ James said, gesturing back to the gate. Harry had forgotten they would also know their way around the village.
The café was shut, as was the cornershop. The remaining light in the square came from a fish and chip shop which was bathed in golden light and familiar smells. Harry alone went in, the only one with a wallet to start with, let alone any muggle money. He ordered three cones of chips and basked in the warmth of the shop.
‘Long evening?’ The assistant asked him, eyes narrowed at Harry’s reddened face and bloodshot eyes.
‘Just a bit,’ Harry said as he took the chips and his change and returned to the curb James and Lily had seated themselves on.
They ate in silence for a while, Harry assuming the other two were ravenous like himself and also trying to remember the last time he had eaten. He thought of where to go next, and quickly determined it would not be the Ministry or Hogwarts. This would be delicate; the Rita Skeeters of the world would likely explode with excitement if they found out Harry Potter’s parents were back. And Harry wanted peace in light of Kingsley’s announcement; he wanted a quiet length of time to sit with the chaos before working out why that alarm clock had been cursed, why people were coming back, the mounds of paperwork awaiting him at his desk…
‘We’ll go to my house,’ Harry said, ‘I can apparate us there.’
‘You can side-along two people?’ James said in mild surprise, crumpling up his food wrappings.
‘Oh—yes,’ Harry replied, ‘they get you to learn if you can in training.’
‘Training?’
‘I’m an Auror.’ It pained him to mention he was Head Auror, and he shied away from boasting as he usually did. He didn’t mention that usually people failed to apparate multiple others in training, also.
James and Lily nodded in acknowledgement. But Harry saw the smirk on James’ face in the second before they apparated to his home, and was suddenly filled with light at the prospect of telling his father he was the youngest Seeker in a century.
They landed in Harry’s living room as usual, in front of the fireplace as if they had arrived through the Floo. He checked quickly that all limbs were attached, concerned at the amount of time it had been since he had last done this; but all was well.
As James and Lily righted themselves, a rotund spaniel bounded into the room followed by thundering child’s footsteps.
‘Shit—’ Harry said.
‘MUM!’ Lily shouted as she thudded down the stairs, ‘Number Two’s escaped again!’
Ginny shouted over the warbling radio from the kitchen; ‘You can’t keep holding the dog hostage in your room!’
‘Number Two?’ James asked with a raised brow, bending down to stroke the dog behind the ears.
‘He’s our second Padfoot, the kids wanted to keep the name—’
‘Kids?’ Lily said in a high, high voice, with rounded eyes swivelling to the doorway in wonder.
Harry grabbed Padfoot by the belly and hoisted him to his chest. He wriggled and whined loudly, trying to get to the strangers.
Lily, hearing where her captive had gone, trampled into the living room. ‘Padfoot!’ She shouted angrily before her eyes settled on her grandparents for the first time.
‘Uh—’ her eyes flicked back and forth between them and Harry. ‘Dad, what—’
‘Get mum please,’ Harry said shrilly, releasing Padfoot and letting him lope out of the room to chase his next excitement, brushing past Lily’s shins without harassment.
But Lily did not need to get Ginny, because Harry’s wife had clearly heard him and was in the doorway in a flash, rumpled jumper and spatula in hand. ‘Get mum for what?’ Ginny asked, rounding the doorframe.
‘Well, Ginny—’
‘Oh Merlin—’ she said, eyes round. Harry’s parents looked alarmed and began to shift closer together.
‘We were listening on the radio, dad!’
‘Merlin’s balls—shit—Mother of Morgana—’
‘Auntie Hermione was on it too!’
‘I can’t believe—I just—’
‘Who are these people, dad?’
It seemed to shock Ginny into silence, though Harry couldn’t stop cringing away from the situation. He had inexplicably expected, somehow, for the fates to align and for his family to be out at Ron and Hermione’s or at the Burrow. He thanked any and all gods that Hogwarts had begun the new term and James and Albus were far, far away.
‘Upstairs,’ Ginny said suddenly. She grabbed her daughter’s shoulder tightly. ‘We are going upstairs.’
‘Ouch, mum—’
The last thing Harry heard before a bedroom door closed was Ginny hissing ‘not now, Lily!’.
‘Can I, uh, sit down?’ James said weakly, already slumping into the sofa.
‘Yes, of course,’ Harry said, absently looking at the doorway. He swiped a hand across his forehead. ‘Sorry about that. I thought they would be out. Or—well, I thought, anyway. That was my daughter, Lily.’
‘Lily,’ his mother said faintly, sitting beside her husband. Harry laughed bleakly.
‘Never thought that would be an issue.’
Ginny came down the stairs with light footsteps; Lily did not follow her.
‘I’ve promised her a Diagon Alley trip,’ she said tiredly, still wielding the spatula. She looked to Harry with wide eyes, moving to his side still by the fireplace.
‘Good plan.’ Harry said. Ginny took his hand and moved him to the sofa opposite James and Lily. The air was heavy.
He did not need to make the introduction himself. It was Ginny, glorious Ginny, who looked to her impossibly young mother and father-in-law and extended an olive branch.
‘My name is Ginny,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve known Harry since I was nine—since he went to Hogwarts. He was friends with my brother. You might know my parents—Molly and Arthur?’
‘Weasley?’ James said at once, a spark of happiness and recognition in his eye. ‘Yes, definitely, we didn’t come across each other much but we always saw each other at—meetings.’
‘Yes, the Order,’ Ginny said with a small smile. ‘We know all about that. We all tried to join it.’
‘You said You-Know-Who was dead?’ Lily asked, frowning.
‘He was. But he came back and then… died again.’ What a simple way of putting the defining point of his life, no matter how much he rallied against it being so. How painfully, painfully, simple it was as an explanation.
‘We’ve come back,’ James said slowly. ‘What’s to stop him?’
Harry swallowed around the lump in his throat. He felt the eyes of his wife and parents boring into his head. ‘He won’t be coming back,’ Harry said resolutely, ‘I promise.’
It seemed neither James nor Lily were convinced, but for the first time Harry felt convinced of his own words. If immortality required such a splitting of the soul, of such effort, then surely something so effortless on Harry’s part as the return of so many would prevent Voldemort’s return. His parents, Sirius, Remus—their return was so freely given by fate, and yet the Horcruxes exacted such a toll on their creator. It went against logic for the Dark Lord to return so simply too.
Ginny shifted beside him.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’d never imagined it. But I’m so glad.’
‘Thank you,’ Lily said quietly.
James leant forward, hands on his knees. His face was suddenly incredulous. ‘Are you married?’
Ginny barked out a laugh and Harry couldn’t help the grin that slid across his face.
‘Here,’ Ginny said, summoning a large photo album from the mantle. ‘It’s not our wedding album, but this is one of the kids.’
Lily gasped and craned her neck to see the album. James placed it in his lap with a tenderness one usually reserved for newborn children.
‘Ah,’ he said thickly, looking upwards as he glanced at the photo encased in the cover, blinking. ‘They, uh—they look like you.’
Harry knew he wasn’t talking about Harry now. He knew the photo was from when Lily had just been born, when she was folded into a light yellow blanket and surrounded by James and Al grinning toothily at Harry, behind the camera. James was about three and Al about two, with the same baby faces Harry must have had when his parents had seen him last.
‘They do,’ Harry said, watching his parents pour over the album with small, tearful smiles. Ginny took his hand.