Chapter Text
CHAPTER 14.
i keep the door unlocked in case you meant it when you said you'd stay
I built a home and watched you burn it / You asked for safety, I gave you ruins
...
James doesn’t mean to wake him.
That’s the first lie he tells himself.
Morning creeps into the guest room in thin, gray bands, slicing through the gap in the curtains and crawling across the bed. Regulus is exactly where James left him hours ago: curled onto his side, blankets tangled around his legs, one arm flung over his head like he’s trying to block out the world even in sleep. His hair spills over the pillow in dark waves, a soft, disordered halo that doesn’t match the hard set of his mouth.
Cassian is still asleep too, sprawled sideways at the foot of the bed with Fooey clutched to his chest, mouth open, one sock already gone. Kreacher must’ve tried to correct that before giving up.
It should be a peaceful scene.
It isn’t.
The room is too still. Too fragile. Like one wrong word could splinter it down the middle.
James stands by the doorway for a full minute, just… watching. He tells himself he’s making sure everything is all right. That Regulus is breathing. That Cassian hasn’t had another nightmare. That Kreacher hasn’t undone three decades of Order training and hexed the house down in the middle of the night.
But really, he’s stalling.
The clock on the wall ticks, each second a nudge between his shoulder blades. Lily expects him at the her house. Harry expects him. The Ministry expects him back at his desk after lunch as if nothing in his life is currently rearranging itself around an ex-Death Eater and a five-year-old with magic like a live wire.
He clears his throat.
“Regulus.”
It comes out softer than intended, almost careful. The sound still slices through the quiet.
Regulus’s eyes snap open.
For a heartbeat he’s all instinct, pupils blown wide, body going rigid, shoulders drawing up as if he’s back in some unfamiliar flat, waiting for a landlord’s fist on the door or something worse. His hand moves automatically toward the bedside table, fingers searching for a wand that isn’t there.
James watches the exact moment awareness returns. The room settles into focus behind Regulus’s stare, the worn wallpaper, the wardrobe with the sticky door, Cassian’s small body at the end of the bed. James. The tension doesn’t vanish, but it shifts, curling inward instead of readying for a fight.
“What is it?” Regulus asks, voice rough. There is no good morning. No pretense.
James glances at Cassian, then back at him, lowering his voice. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I just—” He hesitates. There’s no delicate way to say it. “I have to go out for a bit.”
Something in Regulus’s expression closes off, as if a door slams shut behind his eyes.
“Out,” he repeats, slow. His gaze flicks to the window, to the faint light behind the curtains, to James’s already-buttoned shirt and the Auror badge clipped to his belt. “You mean to the Ministry.”
“And to see Harry.” James nods once, forcing it to sound simple, ordinary. “My day with him, remember? I swapped shifts this week.”
He searches Regulus's face for the reaction. There it is: that small, sharp flinch at Harry's name. The way his shoulders tighten, like he's bracing for a blow only he can see.
Regulus looks away first.
“Of course,” he says. The words are smooth, but his fingers twist in the blanket, nails digging into the worn fabric. “You should go. He’s your son.”
The room feels colder for how carefully he says it.
James takes a step closer to the bed, the floorboards creaking under his weight. “Regulus. Look at me.”
Regulus does, but slowly, as if it costs him something. Up this close, the exhaustion is worse. Dark crescents sit under his eyes like bruises, his skin too pale against the pillowcase. Nightmares, James thinks. The kind that don’t ease even when you wake.
“I’m coming back,” James says, each word deliberate. “This isn’t—” He gestures vaguely toward the door, toward the world outside these walls. “I’m not choosing one and leaving the other. I’m just going to see my son. And then I’ll come back here. To you. To Cassian.”
The confession leaves a strange ache in his chest once it’s out in the world.
Regulus’s gaze flickers over his face, searching for the trap. He’s so obviously used to fine print, to hidden clauses and buried knives, that straightforward intention seems almost suspicious.
“People go out,” he says after a beat, brittle. “They say they’ll be right back. They don’t always return.”
James’s jaw tightens. “I’m not ‘people.’ I’m me.”
Regulus’s mouth twists in something that isn’t quite a smile. “That’s precisely the problem.”
The retort sits between them, fragile and bitter and almost—almost—funny. James huffs a breath, not quite a laugh, and reaches up to scrub a hand through his hair.
“The wards will hold,” he says. “Remus strengthened them last week. Kreacher knows what to do if anything feels off. You won’t be unprotected.”
“I’m not worried about wards.” Regulus’s voice softens, almost against his will. His gaze slides to the small form at the end of the bed. “Cassian gets anxious when routines change. He notices when people vanish without explanation.” He swallows. “He noticed it often enough before we came here.”
James follows his look.
Cassian snores quietly, lashes resting on his cheeks, one small foot sticking out from under the blanket. Fooey is pressed firmly against his chest, the fabric worn nearly threadbare where fingers have clutched it over and over again. James is suddenly, acutely aware that his absence will register more than he wants it to.
“I’ll tell him before I go,” James says. “And I’ll be back before bedtime. You can throw at me whatever you like if I’m late.”
“You’re assuming I’ll still be here when you return,” Regulus murmurs.
It’s quiet. Too quiet.
The words dig under James’s ribs. He hears what Regulus isn’t saying: I’ve left before. I know how to disappear. I know how to run.
He’s close enough now to see the way Regulus’s throat works as he swallows, the faint tremor in his fingers where they rest on the blanket. Panic sits just beneath the surface, leashed for Cassian’s sake, not his own.
James lowers himself to sit on the edge of the mattress, careful not to jostle the boy at the foot. The bed dips under his weight; the shift brings them closer, warm air mingling between them.
“If you wanted to be gone,” he says quietly, “Kreacher wouldn’t have let me find you in the first place.”
A flicker of surprise crosses Regulus’s features—quick, unguarded. Then, faster, the defenses rise again.
“You think I haven’t left before?” he asks, voice flat. “You think I’ve never packed what little we own and walked out in the middle of the night because it was safer that way?”
“I think,” James says, “you didn’t have anyone promising to come back then.”
Regulus looks at him properly now, as if weighing that. The silence stretches, taut and thin.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” he admits, barely audible. “With you. With this.”
James swallows. “You don’t have to do anything with it. Just… let it be true.”
The honesty feels like stepping off a ledge.
Between them, Cassian sighs in his sleep and rolls onto his side, one small arm flopping closer to James’s knee. The movement breaks the tension enough that Regulus drags in a slow breath, his shoulders easing by a fraction.
“How is he?” James asks, nodding toward the boy. “Last night—he seemed all right, but…”
“He slept,” Regulus says. His hand moves almost unconsciously to hover over Cassian’s ankle, careful not to wake him. “No nightmares. Not that I heard.”
“Good.” Relief loosens something in James’s chest. “If he wakes up before I leave—”
“He’ll cling to you and demand dragon pancakes,” Regulus says dryly. “You’ll never get out the door.”
James’s mouth quirks. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
He stands slowly, the mattress sighing as it releases his weight. Regulus’s eyes track the movement, the way James reaches for his wand, the way he shoulders his worn robes like armor. James can feel it; the reluctance in his own bones, the pull to stay.
He ignores it. He can’t be in two places at once, no matter how desperately he wants to be.
At the doorway, he pauses.
“I’ll floo Remus before I go,” he adds, glancing back. “Just to let him know you’re here. If anything happens—anything at all—you have him and you have me.”
“And Dumbledore,” Regulus says, with a bitter little twist of his mouth. “Don’t forget your shining general.”
James’s expression hardens. “I’m not telling Dumbledore where you are.”
Regulus goes very still. “You already told him you took someone in.”
“I—did not,” James corrects. “Not a name. Not a location. Not that you’re here with a child. That part is mine. Not his.”
The admission hangs between them, heavy and electric.
Regulus studies him for a long, long moment, as if searching for the catch and not finding one.
“You’re a fool,” he says softly.
“Probably.” James’s smile is crooked and tired. “But I’m a stubborn fool. That counts for something.”
He takes a step into the hall, then another. The world outside the bedroom feels sharper, louder—the clink of dishes from the kitchen, the faint rustle of Kreacher moving about, the distant hum of London beyond the wards.
“James.”
His name stops him.
He turns back.
Regulus sits propped against the headboard now, blanket pulled up around his waist, hair falling into his eyes. He looks smaller like this, without the armor of cold sarcasm and sharp retorts, just a man who has survived too much with too little.
“Don’t… be late,” Regulus says.
It sounds like an order. It isn’t.
James nods. “I won’t.”
And for the first time in a very long time, he intends—down to his bones—to keep that promise.
James hates the walk back into the Auror Office.
The corridor is the same as always—too bright, too clean, full of people who still think the world makes sense if you file the right form. He feels like an impostor in his own robes, the weight of the case folder under his arm heavier than his wand.
Brockwell Park Incident – TL3 – Unidentified Minor.
That’s what the header says. It doesn’t say: Regulus Black is alive and I took his son home instead of processing him.
He pushes open the bullpen door with his shoulder. Conversations dip for a heartbeat and then surge back, quills scratching, memos swooping, someone swearing at a jammed file cabinet. Dawlish has his boots up on his desk, reading the Prophet like they aren’t all missing a war under their noses.
“Potter,” Robards calls from his glass-walled office, not bothering to disguise the irritation in his voice. “In here. Now.”
Of course.
James forces his feet to move.
Robards’ office smells like old coffee and damp parchment. The man himself stands behind his desk, broad shoulders tense under dark robes, today’s stack of incident reports fanned out in front of him.
He doesn’t offer James a chair.
“You took your time,” Robards says, tapping one of the files. “Obliviators sent their report half an hour ago. We’ve got two Muggle kids with memory gaps and a bench in splinters. Where’s the source?”
James sets the Brockwell folder on the desk. “Contained.”
Robards’ eyes narrow. “Contained where?”
“In the system,” James says evenly. “Filed as an unregistered minor under Muggle guardianship. Magic stable enough once he calmed down.”
It’s not even a complete lie—just bent until it creaks.
Robards flips the folder open. Inside: James’ neat handwriting, the wrong name he made up on the way here, a description that’s accurate enough to pass and vague enough not to mean anything. No address. No Muggle parents listed. Under DISPOSITION he’s written, in a cramped, tidy hand:
Returned to family. Obliviators confirm no further magical witnesses. No follow-up required.
Robards’ jaw tightens. “No follow-up? Threat Level Three doesn’t just become ‘no follow-up,’ Potter. That burst could have leveled a house if it happened indoors. Where are the parents?”
James meets his gaze. “Scared. Muggle. Didn’t want us anywhere near their kid once they realized we existed.” He shrugs, letting some of his own post-war weariness seep into his tone. “You know how it is. We press too hard and we get another Skeeter article about kidnappings and brainwashing.”
It’s a plausible line. It’s also complete bullshit.
Robards snorts. “I’d rather a Skeeter article than a crater in Brixton.”
“Which is why I stayed,” James counters. “Talked them down. Showed them how to keep him calm, what triggers to avoid until the Trace can help us monitor.”
Robards eyes him, assessing. The magical signature trace is sensitive, but not perfect. If James says the family panicked and Apparated out with the kid before the Ministry could pin them to an address, well—stranger things have happened.
“You got a name at least?” Robards asks.
James taps the file. “There’s one in there.”
Robards scans the line. The lie sits there in ink, simple and obscene: Evan Carter. Age approx. 5.
No Cassian. No Black.
“Looks Muggle enough,” Robards mutters. “You’re sure the parents aren’t sitting on any dark heirlooms? No sign this is something more than a frighteningly powerful kid having a bad day?”
James thinks of shadow stitched toys and green fire. Of a boy whose magic calculates. Of a father who would bleed himself dry before he let anyone use his son.
He forces his voice to stay level. “I’m sure.”
Robards studies him for a long moment. James holds his stare, every inch the professional Auror, the war hero, the man who does the right thing.
Finally, Robards exhales. “You’ve earned some trust, Potter. Don’t make me regret it.” He snaps the file shut. “File this with Accidental Magic and make sure their lot flags it. If the Trace picks up another surge at that signature, we move in, parents be damned. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Robards waves him away. “Go. You look like death. Take the afternoon. If anything else explodes, I’ll owl you.”
James nods once and turns to go. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his teeth. On the far wall, a framed photograph of the post‑war Auror recruit class smiles and waves at him—himself, younger and tired but hopeful, Sirius grinning like an idiot at his side, Remus in the back row, arms folded, watching all of them.
He can’t breathe.
He makes it as far as the narrow corridor outside Records before his knees try to give out. He braces a hand against the cold stone, bowing his head, sucking in air.
You just falsified a Threat Level Three report. You just invented a child. You just lied to your commanding officer.
And you’re going to do it again if you have to.
A memo flutters past his ear, shrieking about missing cauldron thickness standards. He straightens, wiping a hand over his face, and pushes the door into the Records room.
Inside, it’s quiet—rows of shelves, the hum of preservation charms, the soft rustle of parchments adjusting themselves. An elderly witch at the desk barely glances up.
“Accidental Magic file,” James says, sliding the Brockwell folder across. “New entry. Flag the magical signature for monitoring.”
She grunts, takes the file, and stamps it with a spell. The parchment glows briefly, the ink on the classification line shifting from TEMPORARY to FILED.
It’s official now. The system believes Evan Carter exists.
The system will never find Cassian Black. Not through this route.
James turns to leave. At the door, he hesitates.
He could go back to Robards. He could confess. He could drag Regulus and Cassian into a holding cell and wash his hands of it all.
But he can still see the way Regulus had clung to his son like a man drowning, the way Cassian had pressed his tiny hand, sticky with chocolate, against his father’s mouth to force him to eat.
He walks out instead.
By the time he reaches the Atrium, his mask is back in place. He nods at a Hit Witch he vaguely recognizes, sidesteps a grumbling goblin, and steps into the queue for the Floos.
Lily’s address sits on his tongue like a promise he doesn’t quite deserve to make.
“I’ll see him after lunch,” he tells himself under his breath. “I’ll take Harry to the park. We’ll feed the ducks. For a few hours, I’ll be just his dad.”
The green flames flare, and James steps forward.
He leaves the Ministry behind—and the lies cooling in its files—like a man walking away from a fuse he just lit.
Lily is waiting for him at the flat door, arms folded, hip braced against the frame like she has been there long enough to decide whether or not to let him in.
Harry peeks out from behind her leg, glasses slightly crooked, hair sticking up worse than James’s ever did at that age. The sight punches the air from his lungs for a second.
“Hi,” James says, uselessly.
Lily doesn’t answer.
Up close, the anger is obvious. Not fiery, not explosive—he knows that version of her too—but the colder kind, the kind that settles into her jaw and the set of her shoulders. Hurt, more than anything.
“You didn’t come last weekend,” she says at last. No greeting, no preamble. “You didn’t owl. You didn’t floo. Harry sat in the window for two hours with his trainers on.”
Guilt lands heavy in his chest.
“I know,” James says. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes flash. “You’re sorry.” She repeats it like she is testing the shape of the word. “James, you promised him. We had a whole plan. And then nothing. Do you know how that looks?”
“Yes.” He forces himself not to look away. “Like I don’t care. I know exactly how it looks.”
Something flickers over her face, surprise, maybe, at the honesty, but it doesn’t soften the anger.
“So?” she presses. “What happened that was more important than your son?”
Harry shifts his weight at her side, small fingers tightening in the fabric of her jeans. His eyes are on James’s shoes, not his face.
James drags a hand through his hair.
“I took a protected witness into the house,” he says. “For work. As an Auror.”
Lily’s brow creases. She leans back a fraction, as if to take him in from a different angle. “You… what?”
“It was short notice,” James goes on. “Dangerous situation. No safe houses free that weren’t already compromised. I brought them to mine.”
“Them.” Her voice is flat. “James, that’s not vague at all.”
“I can’t give you details,” he says. “You know I can’t. Not names, not history, not case files. It’s not just my job on the line—it’s their life. But it’s… heavy. It’s not the kind of thing I could leave alone in my sitting room while I went off to be Fun Weekend Dad.”
Lily stares at him for a long moment. The anger doesn’t vanish, but it shifts, making room for something else; wariness, maybe. Fear.
“You brought a protected witness into your house,” she says slowly. “Into the same house where you sleep. Where you eat. Where you’d normally have Harry. And you didn’t think that was a conversation we needed to have before you did it?”
He winces. “I didn’t have time to make it a conversation. It was either that or hand them over to people who would have them dead before morning.”
She exhales sharply through her nose, gaze cutting away toward the street for a heartbeat as she thinks. When she looks back, the line between her brows is deeper.
“You have a child,” she says. “You don’t get to make decisions like that in a vacuum anymore. I am not saying your work isn’t important, James, but you can’t keep stacking danger on top of danger and expect Harry to just… orbit around it.”
“I know.” The words scrape on the way out. “I know I can’t keep doing that. I’m not trying to drag him into anything. I kept him away on purpose, Lils. That’s why I didn’t come last weekend. I didn’t want him anywhere near it until I understood what I’m dealing with.”
“And in the meantime you left him sitting in the window,” she says quietly. “Thinking you’d forgotten him.”
That lands harder than any curse.
James looks at Harry finally. The boy is still half-hiding behind Lily, but his eyes are on James now, wide and careful. Not angry. Just… measuring.
James crouches down so he is level with him.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t come. Something happened with work and I handled it badly. That’s on me. Not on you.”
Harry shifts his foot, the toe of his trainer tracing a line on the mat.
“You said we’d go to the park,” Harry mutters. It is not an accusation so much as a fact laid down between them.
“I did,” James says. “And I didn’t show up. That was wrong. You can be mad at me for that. You should be.”
Harry glances up at Lily, like he is checking if that is allowed. She doesn’t say anything. She just watches.
James straightens slowly, turning back to her.
“I can’t undo last weekend,” he says. “But I can do better now. The situation at the house is… contained, for the moment. I’ll be back at the Ministry after lunch, but I finish early this week. If you’re all right with it, I’d like to come by after work every day for the rest of the week and take Harry out. Not overnight. Just afternoons. Park, homework, whatever he needs.”
Lily’s fingers drum once against her own arm, a restless tic she picked up during the war and never quite lost.
“Every day,” she repeats. “You think you can manage that with a protected witness in your living room and Alastor breathing down your neck?”
“If something explodes, I’ll tell you,” he says. “I won’t vanish again. If I have to cancel, you hear it from me before the day even starts. Not after Harry’s been waiting at the window.”
He meets her eyes and doesn’t look away.
Silence stretches. The sounds of the street drift around them, distant traffic, a dog barking, someone laughing a few doors down.
Finally Lily sighs, some of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders.
“All right,” she says. “You can see him after work.”
James lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
“But,” she adds, lifting a finger, “we’re not pretending this isn’t a problem. You need to think about what it means to bring that kind of responsibility into your home when you already have one waiting for you at the end of every week. You don’t get points for being noble if Harry pays the price for it.”
“I know.” His voice is quiet, but steady. “I’m trying to figure out how to… balance it. I’m not doing a great job yet.”
“No,” she agrees. “You’re not.”
Then her expression softens just slightly, the sharp edges easing. “But you’re here now.”
She steps back from the door, opening it wider.
“Mary’s coming over in a bit,” she says. “We’re making dinner. Take him to the park for an hour or two while we cook. Burn off some of that energy so he doesn’t bounce off the walls when we all sit down.”
James almost laughs. “Is that an official Evans prescription?”
“It’s a self-defense measure,” she says dryly. “For my dishes.”
She looks down at Harry. “Go on, love. Coat on. Shoes tied properly. No running in the stairwell.”
Harry brightens, the guardedness cracking around the edges. “Can we feed the ducks?” he asks James, already halfway to the hooks where his coat hangs.
“If we can find any bread that isn’t green,” James says. “And if we don’t, we’ll improvise.”
Harry snorts in a way that is painfully familiar. “You’re not allowed to transfigure rocks into bread again. Mum said that was ‘ethically questionable.’”
Lily covers a smile with the back of her hand.
“Listen to your mother,” James says gravely. “She’s cleverer than both of us.”
Harry wrestles his arms into his coat, grabs his scarf, and bounds back to the doorway, eyes bright now.
James looks at Lily one last time.
“I’ll bring him back before dinner,” he says. “And I’ll owl tonight about the rest of the week. No surprises.”
“Good,” she says. Then, softer, “Be careful. With whatever you’ve dragged into that house.”
He nods. “I am.”
Lily steps aside fully, letting father and son pass.
As they head down the stairs, Harry’s hand finds James’s without hesitation, small fingers slipping into his palm as if they have done this every day of his life. James squeezes back, the weight of everything he is carrying, Regulus and Cassian, the war—pressing in on him from every side.
For the next few hours, he decides, the only thing that matters is this: the park, the ducks, the sound of Harry’s laugh echoing off the swings.
The rest can wait.
James had forgotten how loud the park could be.
Not in the way battles were loud, not the crack of curses and the collapse of stone, but in that smaller, relentless way: children shouting over one another, dogs barking, the metallic squeak of swings, the hollow thud of trainers hitting packed earth. Normal noise. He lets it wash over him like something half-remembered.
Harry shoots ahead of him the moment they pass through the gate, scarf streaming out behind him like a banner. “Come on, Dad!” he calls over his shoulder.
James stuffs his hands in his pockets and follows at a slower pace, boots crunching over gravel. “We have time,” he calls back. “The ducks aren’t going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that,” Harry says, scandalised. “They could fly away.”
“They could,” James concedes. “They could also be lazy and fat and waiting for bread like they always are.”
Harry huffs, but he is grinning as he veers toward the pond. The water is a dull brown-green in the weak winter light, a thin skin of ice clinging stubbornly to one shadowed corner. A small cluster of ducks patrols the edge, already eyeing the new arrivals with professional interest.
Harry skids to a stop by the low railing. “Do you think they remember us?” he asks, serious in the way only a six-year-old can be.
James comes to stand beside him, shoulder almost brushing Harry’s. “You fed that one half a loaf last time,” he says, nodding toward a particularly round mallard. “If he doesn’t remember you, he remembers your generosity.”
Harry squints. “He looks fatter.”
“See? Unforgettable.”
Harry laughs, high and pleased, and James’s chest tightens around the sound. He digs into the paper bag Lily had thrust at him on their way out. The bread inside is only slightly stale. He tears off a piece and holds it out.
Harry takes it carefully. “No rocks this time.”
“I said I was sorry about that,” James mutters. “It seemed like a clever solution at the time.”
“You turned a rock into bread and then it turned back while that lady was looking.” Harry wrinkles his nose at the memory. “She screamed.”
“She overreacted,” James says. “It was just a small rock.”
“You’re not allowed to do transfiguration in the park. Mum said so.”
“Yes, well, your mum has many sensible rules.” James tears his own bit of bread and tosses it. The ducks surge forward in a feathery mass, quacking in outraged harmony as they jostle for position. “We will respect them. This time.”
They fall into an easy rhythm. Harry leans over the rail, tossing small pieces one by one, narrating which duck gets which crumb. “Orange beak. Green head. Stripey one. That one’s greedy. Hey, share!”
James lets his mind go quiet for a few minutes, focusing only on the arc of breadcrumbs, the splash of water, the way Harry’s cheeks are already going pink from the cold. It feels almost like occlumency, shutting out everything that isn’t here. No Ministry, no Regulus with his haunted eyes, no Cassian cutting the world with shadows.
“Dad?”
James blinks. “Yeah?”
“Why didn’t you come last week?”
The question is simple. It still hits like a punch.
He could deflect. Make a joke. But there is too much of that between them already.
“Because I made a bad decision,” he says after a moment. “About work. And I didn’t fix it the way I should have. I thought keeping you away was safer. I should’ve told you. And your mum.”
Harry frowns, tearing off a larger chunk of bread than necessary. “Was it scary?”
“A bit,” James admits. “The magic was. The person wasn’t. He was more scared than anyone else.”
Harry tips his head up, eyes narrow behind his glasses. “Like when I did the snake thing at the zoo?”
James startles. “What?”
Harry flushes, looking down fast. “Nothing.”
“Harry.” James crouches again, nudging his shoulder gently. “What snake thing?”
There is a pause. Harry pushes his glasses up his nose with the back of his wrist, buying time.
“We went to the zoo,” he says finally. “On a school trip. There was a snake in a glass box. It was all sleepy. I talked to it and it woke up. It talked back.” He risks a glance at James’s face, then looks away again quickly. “Mum and Mary said it was my imagination. But it wasn’t. It was… ssssss.” He lets the sound slip between his teeth, soft and precise.
Parseltongue.
James goes very still.
He remembers Cassian’s eyes. Remembers the way his voice had twisted when he calmed the snake in the story Regulus told. Remembers Dumbledore’s warning:
Would you endanger your own son to keep Voldemort’s heir alive?
His stomach turns.
Harry misreads the silence. His shoulders hunch. “It was bad, wasn’t it?” he whispers. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be cross. Or… scared.”
James swallows hard and reaches out, gripping his son’s shoulders, gentle but firm. “Look at me.”
Harry does. His eyes are huge behind the smudged lenses.
“I am not scared of you,” James says. Each word is deliberate, anchored. “And I am not cross with you for having magic. Talking to snakes is odd, sure. But it’s not evil. It just is.”
“But Voldemort—”
“Voldemort was evil because of the choices he made. Not because he could hiss at snakes.” James forces his voice to stay even, forces the panic down where Harry cannot see it. “You are nothing like him.”
Harry’s lower lip wobbles. “The snake said I was funny.”
“Snakes have terrible taste,” James says solemnly. “You are far funnier than any reptile.”
Harry snorts, a tiny, wet laugh. He scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve.
James exhales slowly. “Next time something like that happens, you tell me. Or Lily. Or Remus. Or Sirius. Any of us. We can’t help if we don’t know, yeah?”
Harry nods. “Okay.”
James ruffles his hair, the familiar softness grounding him. “Good. Now give that fat one the last piece. He’s eyeing me like he might try to climb out and mug us.”
Harry giggles and flings the final chunk of bread at the most rotund duck in the water. It snatches the offering and turns in a slow, satisfied circle.
They drift away from the pond once the bread is gone, Harry skipping ahead again. He gravitates toward the swings, naturally. James follows, his mind still buzzing around the word Parseltongue like a fly that refuses to be swatted.
Harry climbs into the nearest swing awkwardly. His legs are still too short to do it smoothly, and James steadies the chain with one hand until he’s settled.
“Push me,” Harry demands, already leaning back.
“Yes, your majesty.” James wraps his hands around the cold metal and gives a small shove.
The chains creak. Harry’s trainers cut through the air, toes pointed at the sky. Each time he swings forward he lets out a little whoop that makes other children glance over, curious.
“Higher,” he says. “Higher!”
James obliges, pushing harder.
The arc lengthens. The air rushes past. For a few seconds Harry is all motion and wild hair and fearless laughter, cutting through the grey morning like a spell designed only to banish.
James watches, keeping one hand on the back of the swing, ready if anything goes wrong. His body knows how to protect before his brain finishes the thought. It has spent too many years doing exactly that.
“You scared?” Harry calls back, pretending not to care about the answer.
“Terrified,” James says. “The bravest thing I’ve done all week is let you on this swing.”
“That’s because you’re old,” Harry says, smug.
“Twenty-six is not old.”
“It is from down here.”
James laughs, and something in his chest unclenches.
They stay like that for a while. Swing, push, whoop. Other families come and go. A dog barrels past at one point and tries to steal a forgotten ball. A toddler in a red coat falls and wails until she is scooped up and soothed.
It is so ordinary that it hurts.
Eventually Harry’s arms start to tire. His hands slip a little on the chains, and his shouts turn to breathless giggles.
“Done?” James asks.
Harry drags his heels in the dirt to slow himself down. “Can we go see the trees?” he asks. “I want to climb.”
“Of course you do,” James mutters. “Your uncle Sirius has infected you.”
“Padfoot climbs better than you,” Harry says with unshakable faith as they head toward the line of scrawny trees near the far fence.
“Pads also falls out of them more often than I do,” James replies. “Don’t copy everything he does.”
“I won’t.” A beat. “I’ll copy the cool bits.”
“How reassuring.”
Harry finds a tree that is more of a tall shrub than anything else and starts planning his route like it is a mountain. James leans against the nearest trunk, watching every handhold, biting back the reflex to hover too close.
He thinks of Regulus.
Of another Black boy with eyes too old for his age. Of how no one had ever stood at the base of his metaphorical tree and watched for loose branches.
Harry hauls himself up to the first fork and wedges himself there, triumphant. “Look!”
“I see,” James says. “You are one with the tree. Do not start asking me for treetop lessons from now on.”
Harry grins, breath puffing white in the cold. “Can we come back again? Tomorrow?”
“If I get my work done, and if your mum agrees,” James says. “And if you promise not to turn any more zoo snakes into your personal therapists.”
Harry snickers. “I’ll try.”
“Good start.”
They trade a smile that feels like a small truce.
For now, it is enough.
James lets himself into the house as quietly as he can.
The front door sticks just a little at the latch, as it always does when the weather turns. He eases it shut with a hand pressed flat against the wood, waiting for the click to settle instead of slam. The lingering chill from outside clings to his coat, the damp in his hair already starting to curl as he toes his boots off by the mat.
It is quiet.
Not the empty quiet of an unused house, but the layered kind. The soft hum of the old fridge. The faint tick of the kitchen clock. A low, almost imperceptible rasp of breath from the sitting room.
He shrugs out of his coat and hangs it on the back of a chair, moving on instinct along the narrow hall. His wand hand twitches briefly before he forces his fingers to loosen. No one should be here who is not meant to be. The Fidelius holds.
He pauses in the doorway.
The couch sags a little more than he remembers under the weight of two bodies. Regulus has claimed the far corner, his back against the armrest, long legs stretched out awkwardly along the cushions. His head has tipped sideways, resting against the back of the sofa, dark hair falling over his face in a soft, disordered curtain. One hand dangles off the edge, fingers twitching faintly in some dream he will never tell anyone.
Cassian is sprawled half on top of him, half between his ribs and the back of the couch, small body draped across Regulus’s chest like a cat that has decided exactly where it belongs. His cheek is pressed to Regulus’s shirt, one hand fisted in the worn fabric, the other gripping Sir Fooey by one tattered wing. His mouth is open just enough to show a glint of small teeth. Every exhale whistles a little through his nose.
Regulus’s other arm is hooked around Cassian’s back even in sleep, palm spread protectively over the boy’s shoulder. The lines in his face that never seem to really disappear have softened, the harshness melted into something younger. Vulnerable. Without the sharp tilt of his chin and the usual tension between his brows, he looks far closer to the age he should be. A man who never got the chance to be just twenty‑something and tired.
The blanket James had left folded over the arm of the couch earlier now covers both of them. He can see the uneven way it has been pulled, bunched near Cassian’s feet, smoothed near his neck. Cassian must have done part of it himself, patting it down with serious concentration, because the corner over Regulus’s shoulder is a lumpy mess.
There is a smudge of chocolate at the edge of Cassian’s mouth, a faint ring of cocoa around the rim of the empty mug on the coffee table. Next to it, a half‑finished Lego tower leans perilously, a single block offset in a way that makes James think the builder simply ran out of energy mid‑plan.
Something in his chest loosens and tightens at the same time.
He had pictured far worse things on his walk back. Regulus pacing, a bag already packed, Cassian clinging to his hand while they plan their next vanished life. Kreacher tearing apart his cupboards in panic. Dumbledore in his kitchen chair, fingers tented, gaze cutting.
Instead, he finds this. Two exhausted bodies collapsed into the first real safety either of them has had in years and falling asleep in it like they can hardly remember how.
James moves without thinking, stepping into the room on light feet. The floorboard near the hearth always creaks; he skirts it out of habit, making his way to the back of the couch. Up close, he can hear them more clearly. Regulus’s breathing is slow, a little uneven, as if his body cannot quite decide whether to trust rest. Cassian’s is steadier, the soft little snuffle of a child too far gone to be anything but limp.
The blanket has slid off one of Cassian’s bare feet. It is already cool to the touch when James gently tucks it back under the fabric. The boy twitches once, then settles, burrowing closer into Regulus’s chest with a quiet, sleepy sound.
Regulus does not wake. But his hand tightens slightly on Cassian’s back, fingers curling as if to keep him there.
You should go, James tells himself. Let them sleep. Go to the kitchen. Make tea. Think about what you are going to say next.
Instead he lingers, one hand braced on the back of the sofa, eyes tracing the line of Regulus’s profile. There is a faint bruise still yellowing along his jaw, another near his collarbone where the shirt gapes. The Dark Mark is hidden under the sleeve, but James can see the edge of the scar tissue that rings his wrist where Ministry restraints once burned.
He remembers those same hands holding Cassian at the park, the sharp panic in his voice when he shouted at a harmless grass snake. The way he had said my son like it was both a prayer and a threat.
The guilt he has been holding at bay since leaving Lily’s flat rises again, bitter at the back of his throat. He has lied to his boss. Lied to Sirius by omission. Lied to Dumbledore by silence. All of it for this: a couch, a blanket, a man who flinches in his sleep and a child whose nightmares sound like someone else’s memories.
“Some viper,” he mutters under his breath, the word so soft it hardly counts.
Cassian makes a faint sound, a protesting hum, and James freezes, breath caught. The boy shifts, nose scrunching, lashes fluttering. For a moment James thinks he is about to wake fully.
Instead Cassian sighs and burrows even closer, his small hand tightening where it is curled at Regulus’s sternum. His fingers flex, then relax. Regulus’s arm tightens in answer, as if his body recognises the gesture without consulting the rest of him.
James lets his hand fall from the back of the sofa.
He retreats a few steps, giving them back the small privacy they have managed to carve out in his sitting room. From the doorway he glances once more at the tangle of Black hair on the cushions, the rise and fall of two chests in imperfect unison.
Then he turns toward the kitchen.
There will be time later for hard conversations. For Dumbledore’s warning. For Remus’s disappointment. For the impossible calculus of what to do with Harry, with Cassian, with a world that has too many ghosts and not enough places to hide them all.
For now, he fills the kettle, sets it on the stove, and lets the quiet of the house wrap around him the way the blanket wraps around the two sleeping figures in the next room.
Just for a moment, he allows himself to believe that this can hold.