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“Oh,” Harry says the morning after James and Lily foist themselves on him for a surprise visit. “Right. Well, I’m filling Dee’s raised beds this morning. You can help or you can wait.”
James sloshes tea over the side of his cup in his hurry to stand. “I can help.”
“Mum still sleeping? I’ll leave a note. Or Dee can tell her.”
“I’ll do it.” James flicks his wand to summon parchment and frowns when none arrives. “Oh.”
Harry rolls his eyes and tears a sheet from a spiral notebook. “No inkpots either. Want a biro?”
James bites his tongue—hard—and uses the muggle pen to write a quick note about helping Harry with a bed. Then, just because he’s an arse, he uses the paper bird spell they taught him at the Ministry to send the letter fluttering to the nightstand in the guest room.
Harry doesn’t yell at him. So then he feels like a pillock.
Harry hasn’t yelled at all, actually. Even now, he’s being quite welcoming. “Hungry? We’ve got quiche or muffins. The muffins are carrot…something. Dee’s doing.”
“Quiche sounds good.” James tosses Harry his wand, which is sitting loose and vulnerable on the kitchen table. Like a security risk.
Harry pockets it—James bites his tongue against the wand safety spiel—and gets the plates and pan down by hand. He cuts two slices and then pulls the wand out for a gentle heating charm.
He hands one to James, then smacks his forehead and twitches a finger toward the cabinets, one of which opens and releases two forks that zoom toward his hand.
James blinks. That level of control speaks to the kind of power he never thought Harry had. But wandless magic is beyond NEWT level.
His stomach flips. Fuck if Sirius wasn’t right, then.
Then his stomach feels something else, which is rapturous delight at the quiche. “This is great. Onion? Not quite onion. What is that?”
“Chive and cheddar.” Harry takes a bite of his own. “Chives are from the garden.”
“Garden?”
“You’ll see it when we do the beds. Dee’s been bugging me to put up some kind of boundary beyond the greenhouse. Wants some non-planted space for the dog we’re not adopting.”
James smiles to hear the stubbornness that’s always been part of his son being directed at someone else. “So you meant plant beds?”
“You don’t have to come.” Harry sets his now-empty plate to the side.
“I didn’t say that. Merlin, Harry, I was just asking.”
Harry takes a slow breath. “Right. You’re right. Sorry.”
James wants to press his advantage, but he’s too surprised at the apology. It came far easier than it ever used to.
“No magic though. I mean it. We give a lot of the food and flowers to people in town. If you get all our friends obliviated because you don’t want to get mud on your trousers I’ll be furious.”
Fair enough, except for the fact Harry barely mustered an A in Herbology. “Is Dee a green thumb, then?”
“Nah. His mum’s all about it, though. Gave me a thousand bulbs and cuttings after we moved out here. It’s been nice.”
Lily tried to teach Harry how to bake bread that awful summer after the final battle and he broke every window on the ground floor.
“I won’t cast anything,” James says instead of the other five things he’d like to say. “Do I need gloves?”
“This isn’t fiddly. Put on trainers, though. Did you bring any, or do you need some?”
James looks at the line of muddy shoes by the door. He can’t help his nose from wrinkling.
Harry sighs and gestures at the least tattered pair. No wand, again, and yet the shoes clean themselves and shine in seconds. Then they lengthen in the toes. Resizing can be fiddly, even with a wand.
James takes them to a chair and puts them on, marveling at the fit. “Put me to work, then.”
Harry takes him into a plot that would bring tears to Pomona’s eyes, for all that every bit is muggle. He walks along mulch paths between ten neat beds to a greenhouse scattered with budding seedlings inside and surrounded by teeming, flowering pots outside.
There’s a trellis with plants just starting to climb. What the fuck has his son been doing.
“This is nice,” James manages finally.
Harry snorts and hands him two boxes he pulled from the bottom of some kind of tiered shelf. “Mum’s not here. You don’t have to say stuff like that. Just carry these round the back, yeah?”
Well. The dig hits, so James does what he’s told.
Harry makes a few more trips to a tidy line of wooden boxes set over cardboard, lugging piles of twigs and branches, bags of topsoil, and a pair of thin rakes over before he rolls up his sleeves and eyes James.
“Biggest branches go in first. Just enough to cover the bottom. Want to start on the left?”
James does, powerless to ask questions when he’s so out of his depth. Lily’s got a garden, but she just charms the dirt to do what she wants and casts atmosphere and self-watering charms at the lot, then cuts the flowers when they bloom.
“Now the smaller twigs, then woodchips. No, watch the rake.”
Harry catches the handle that flies up toward James’s face before it can hit.
“Alright. Now soil, then compost. Just enough to cover, again. We’ve got to make it stretch. The worms got blown about by a storm last week so we’re a bit thin.”
“Worms?” James feels like Harry’s speaking a different language, except getting him to listen during summer Gobbledegook lessons was a royal pain. “There are spells to repel them.”
“We need them.” Harry’s distracted, which is probably the only reason he answers at all. “Worms help break our kitchen scraps into compost. That’s good. That bed’s got plenty. Compost or tamping?”
“Depends what tamping is.” The sun’s up now, and James can feel it on the back of his neck. “Have you got a—“
Harry shoves a cap at him. “Sun charm wouldn’t go amiss, even with that. We don’t have any aloe at the minute.”
James casts it and puts the hat on, then watches Harry tamp one bed down with the rake before he takes over.
“Gentler touch, please. You don’t have to push so hard.”
“You’re very polite out here.” James wishes he could take it back the moment he says it. Harry can be so damned prickly.
But the garden really is special, because Harry just laughs and pours the last of the compost.
“Dee brings me out here when we fight. Says I won’t let the herbs hear me cuss.”
“Smart man.”
The words are reluctant; James can’t bring himself to warm to Dee. Not even after everyone involved apologized for last Christmas.
James tamps the last bed and hands the rake to Harry. This tentative little bubble is such a bloody relief. He doesn’t want to burst it yet.
“Anything else need doing? I promise I won’t cast anything.”
Harry looks him over. “Might as well plant these out,” he says finally. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” James is afraid to make a move, so he waits. “What can I do?”
“Come with me to the greenhouse. You might want those gloves after all.”
James hurries after him. “What are you planting?”
“They’re all labeled.” Merlin forbid Harry make it easy on him.
But then Harry shows some personality again. It’s disconcerting. “Fuck, I’m meant to get the rhubarb today before I go in. Don’t let me forget.”
“I won’t? I won’t.”
Harry points to a pair of gloves on a set of shelves on the far wall when they get to the greenhouse, then loads up his arms with seedling containers.
“Just a few trips should do it. Can you grab the hose? And take the peas.”
Then Harry runs back and forth a few more times before he shows James how to make little, well-spaced holes and drop tiny shoots into them carefully.
“I’ll do the fiddly bits,” he tells James. “I’ve no doubt you could, but I’m annoying about it.”
All of Harry’s honesty inspires James’s own. “I’ll do whatever you want. This might be the longest we’ve gone without fighting in five years.”
Somehow, Harry laughs and doesn’t curse him solid. “Be fair,” he insists. “Ten. Now toss me those stakes and the twine. I’ve got to start up a trellis for these once we’ve got them in.”
So James keeps listening and following directions. It’s even kind of nice to see their work come together. Something tangible.
“When will this all be ready?”
Harry taps his chin, thinking. It leaves a trail of dirt. “Later this summer, but hard to say beyond that. Weather was such a slog last year.”
It had been a dreary one. Much of that was James’s own outlook, but the foggy, rainy days hadn’t done much to help.
“So it was gloomy up here, too?” James wouldn’t know, since Harry hadn’t told them where he was until this last October. Just before bloody Halloween. He breathes out, slow. They don’t need to rehash that now. “It was miserable in Godric’s Hollow.”
Harry nods absently and snips the twine, then motions James after him to the next bed. “Let’s do, hm. I’ve got lettuce, spring onion, and a few marigolds for this one. Can you make, say, two rows of six evenly-spaced holes? Leave room between the rows for the flowers.”
“You just do this in your head?” James puzzles through the instructions and is ultimately proud of his efforts. “Mate, this is a heap of plants to keep track of.”
Harry smiles and pulls a tiny notepad out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll update this with what we’ve done later. I’d never keep this mess up otherwise.”
James can’t help it; he laughs. “Fair enough. Autumn must be busy if you’ve got all this to pull up.”
“Eh, everything finishes when it finishes.” Harry shrugs, then visibly decides to keep talking. Bites his lip and squares his shoulders and all. “That’s one of the things I like about all this. It takes its own time.”
The not-a-dig also hits. He and Lily aren’t great about letting Harry take his own time. Or so he shouted at them in December.
“Yeah,” James says slowly. “I imagine that’s nice.”
Harry nods and moves on. “Potatoes for this one, Merlin help me, so just eight holes. Deep-ish. Scattered. Like you did for the marigolds.”
“What’s the problem with potatoes?”
“Grow like crazy. I got near about a hundred last year. Dee still takes the mick. Don’t tell him about this.”
“Eight potatoes surely won’t get you over a hundred.” But James likes to be let in on the joke, still.
Harry smiles the kind of smile that James thought died during the Triwizard Tournament. “Yeah, but I’ve got a dozen or so pots of them going already. Two hundred potatoes will make him screech so loudly you’ll hear it from your place.”
So James laughs, loud like he always does. Maybe Sirius can hear it in Wales and know that he was bloody right. “Looking forward to it.”
Then he clears his throat and tries for his own connection. Harry’s letting him in a bit, anyway. “Your mum and I love potatoes. If you, you know. Need somewhere to put fifty or so.”
Harry grins; James’s heart stutters. “Careful. There’s a dozen preservation charms going in the cellar. We’ll load you up before you leave.”
“Please. This really is nice, Hazza. I see why you like it here.”
“I—thanks. Thank you. For that. Er, I think we’re done back here.”
“Except the rhubarb,” James reminds him.
“Except for the fucking rhubarb, which I wouldn’t forget because Dee would murder me dead. And he’d make it stick, too.”
James did not know Harry could joke about that. Great. He loves to remember the time he thought Voldemort killed his kid.
Harry collects their bits and bobs and tosses them all through the greenhouse door. James watches in awe as everything sorts itself and lands in its proper place. Harry’s really good at that.
Then he lifts a huge pot a few steps away and an entire bloody rhubarb plant pops out from underneath. Harry hands James a basket and cheerfully twists off stalks to fill it.
“Don’t eat the leaves. They’re poisonous, but the rest is safe. Better cooked, though.”
“What kind of plant is half-poison, half-food? Why was it under that pot?”
Harry shrugs. “Supposed to make it sweeter. Also apple seeds are poison. Cyanide. Anyway, there’ll be crumble tonight if you stop whining. And I guess if you’re staying that long.”
James shuts up about it. They’re staying until Harry punts them through the wards. “You two do a lot of cooking.”
“Dee does a lot of cooking. Baking. He went to culinary school, actually? Was doing pastry at a very posh place in London when we met.”
“And now he’s here with you,” James says mildly. He’s constitutionally incapable of shutting all the way up, after all.
“I’m here with him,” Harry says, just as primly. “It’s his house.”
“And it’s your trust vault getting the monthly charges.”
Harry stops walking but doesn’t turn to face him. “As it’s my vault, I don’t see how that’s a problem. Or your business. If you must know, those charges are donations to Hermione’s charity.”
Well, fuck him then. “I see.”
“The charity Mum’s on the board of. Right?”
“Right.”
“The one you believe in the mission of? Especially post-battle?”
“Course.” Harry’s got him there. Wixen primary education could really level the playing field for muggleborns. They both know it, because they were both at the speech Lily gave where she said it. “Harry. I didn’t mean—“
“You usually don’t.” Harry spins on his heel. “Come on. You’re going to help me cut some flowers for your room. I’m not breaking our streak over that comment.”
James thanks his lucky stars and follows him. Harry stops by the greenhouse for a basket and gardening shears, then takes him to a new spot along the side of the house.
“Not a word about the sign. Dee’s mum thought it was about industriousness, which you are just chock-a-block full of, young man.” Harry’s voice goes high and a little croaky for his impression.
James bends double and laughs when he reads it.
Harry smiles faintly and starts snipping something pink that Lily will love. He hands a few stems over for James to put in the basket.
“Pick something, go on. Don’t make me do all the work.”
James points at something small and blue. “I like the look of those.”
Harry’s thick brows, so like his own, shoot up. He bends to cut some.
“Forget me not.”
“Excuse me?”
Harry meets his eyes. “That’s the name. Of the flowers you picked.”
“Oh.” It’s apt, is all.
Harry cuts a few more stems. “Better than dirty hoe gardening, at least.”
That sign really is funny.
“Less industrious, though. I’ve got to get a sign like that for your mum. She’ll murder me.” James takes the out for what it is and moves on. “I like the white ones, just there. Unless they’re called, hm, deadbeat dads or something.”
“Foxgloves. They’re early. I like those too. Same white as the owl a kid could use to tell his parents he’s at least alive, huh?”
James closes his eyes. “It wouldn’t have been enough. You were right, at Christmas. About that. We would’ve been even more upset. And you told Sirius.”
“You’re my parents.” Harry shrugs and keeps cutting a few other flowers at random. James accepts every stem he’s handed and gives thanks for tasks that don’t require eye contact. “I get you were worried. I do get that.”
“We were so worried,” James agrees. “But that wasn’t your problem to fix. You fixed a lot of problems that weren’t yours. You shouldn’t have needed to do that, too.”
Harry closes his eyes. James hates when he does that. It’s just like that awful moment when Voldemort came out mid-battle parading him like a trophy.
James was so sure Harry couldn’t die, protected by prophecy as he was. That’s the moment, seeing Remus and Sirius limp out of the forest cradling Harry’s body between them and crying like they never have since, when James stopped trusting every single thing he believed in.
But Haz’s eyes open again now—thank Merlin—and he hands over the rest of his flowers. Then he stands up and leads James back to the greenhouse.
“It wasn’t just you. Why I left. You know that?”
James did not know that. “Uh. Sure.”
“It wasn’t,” Harry says. “It was—the Daily Prophet can get entirely and thoroughly buggered. I did die. Right? You know that.”
“I know that.” Not because Harry told him, but because his kid told Sirius. Not his parents. Not his dad.
Harry puts the shears away by hand this time. Then he turns to look at James. Godric, those eyes. They look so worried. Scared of him.
His kid died. Bugger who told him so.
James opens his arms and charges. Harry allows himself to be caught. His shoulders shake when James draws him in close.
“Hey, hey. I know that.” His kid died. His kid died and then ran away for two years, and he and Lily spent last Christmas taking jabs at his boyfriend when he finally came back. What the fuck is wrong with them. “Harry. Haz, love. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Do you know—“ Harry’s voice cuts off.
“I want to,” James pleads. “I want to know. Tell me.”
Harry doesn’t move, but he does talk. “I did this thing, right? This horrible thing I spent my life preparing to do, and I did it. I had to do it. Then I was just supposed to, what? Live there with all the people who know I did it and want to shake my hand or tell me I didn’t do it quickly enough or something. Stay at your house, when—“
James shushes him. “You shouldn’t have seen that. You shouldn’t have had to see us like that.”
“And then I’m there for Christmas,” Harry says, because he’s just going to say everything and fully flay James’s heart in the telling. “I come back. And I’m in the sitting room where Bellatrix Lestrange had Mum, and there’s a fucking Christmas tree? And you’re, you’re telling me that my boyfriend shouldn’t be a muggle, and where have I been, and what are you supposed to tell people.”
“We got it wrong,” James says. “We got it all so wrong. I like Dee. I really do. The muggle thing—Merlin, it wasn’t about that. It fucking wasn’t, and I know you don’t believe me. I got so—I got it all wrong.”
“And then I go up to my room.” Harry’s hiccuping through his words now. Merlin. Poor fucking kid. “And I’m trying to—you know? I get so angry, and I just need to. To breathe. But I’m trying to calm the fuck down and I’m in the same room that I—that Peter—and then Mum comes up and says I’m being selfish.”
James didn’t know that part. That part is new information.
“So I’m sorry I left,” Harry says. “Both times. That I left twice. I had to go, but I know you hate me and I know you don’t accept my apology, alright? I know. This morning was nice. I don’t know why you’re here.”
“What?” James can’t feel his face. “Hate you? Harry. Harry, love. Sweetheart. No one hates you. I don’t hate you. Mum doesn’t—are you kidding me with this? We accept your apology and we apologize more and no one hates you.”
Harry slumps into him and shakes.
James holds him up. It’s his bloody job to hold him up, and he’s here, and he’s going to do it.
Hate him. Like hell.
Harry tries to pull back eventually.
James doesn’t let him. “You don’t know why we’re here, you said.”
“I don’t.” Harry’s voice is wrecked.
“We are here to apologize and to be with you and to fix what we bloody broke. We broke, Haz.”
“Oh.”
“We want to get to know Dee, and we want to talk to you again, and Sirius said you might not hex us into next year if we showed up so we took the chance.” He clears his throat. “You can still hex us, if you want. We deserve it.”
“You do? You want to—“ Harry’s voice catches.
“If Dee matters to you then he matters to us. Hey. Hey, we were utter shite. No one gives a cuss if he’s a muggle. I panicked, and I worried about painting a target on your back, and I worried about—well. You saw me, at the house. When they had your mum.”
“Oh,” Harry says softly. “Oh, Dad.”
“It’s not about me,” James says firmly. His mind healer’s going to have a field day with this, though. “I handled it badly, and I’m sorry. I’d like to get to know Dee.”
They just breathe for a few minutes.
Harry breaks the silence, but then James already knows his kid is braver than him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” James clears his throat. “Uh, want me to take the flowers in? Would…Dee want to put them in water, or I could give them to Mum, or something?”
Harry pulls back. He looks, Merlin. So much lighter. Less troubled. “Dad. Do you want a minute to calm down?”
It’s a little funny. That question was practically a refrain from Harry’s fifth year on, both he and Lily asking it at least daily.
“Yes,” he decides. “Can I—you go ahead. I won’t cast anything. Swear I won’t. I’ll just sit for a few.”
“Perfect.” Harry puts a hand on his shoulder. “See you in there. Close the door when you leave. Fucking squirrels.”
James laughs, and watches him go. Then he watches one of the squirrels scrabble at the glass.
He can never tell Sirius how right he was.
Lily looks up from the book she’s not reading when the kitchen door opens. Harry comes in, looking different. But then she barely recognizes him these days. Since she never sees him.
“Hi, love,” Dee calls from the bedroom. “Unless you’re H’s dad and then hi to you too.”
“Where is your dad?” Lily asks. “Did you—“
“I didn’t anything,” Harry says quickly. “He’ll be back in a few minutes. We were working in the garden. Are you liking that? I read it a bit ago.”
“Sure.” Lily sets the book down. She doesn’t even know the title. “It’s great.”
Harry raises an eyebrow but doesn’t prod her further. “Did you get breakfast? Tea?”
“Both,” Lily confirms. “Thanks. Sleep well?”
Harry shrugs absently. “Been worse. Uh, I might let Dad talk to you, before we do much more here? He and I just had a lot of this out, and I think it would be easier if—“
“No. No, I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what you two said to each other, but I will not let you run us off before we even get a chance to—“
“Mum, can you let me finish my—“
“Unbelievable, really, that we can’t even make it through one morning without you—“
“Without me—Mum!” Harry yells. “Listen. We had a good talk. I just wanted him to catch you up. Anyway, I’ve got to shower. Back in twenty.”
Fuck. Lily drops to the chair and puts her head in her hands when his footsteps have faded away. Bugger. Bugger fuck.
This is exactly what Sirius told them not to do, isn’t it? Assume. Pretend they have any idea what he’s been up to for months. Longer, really. Over two years. And here she is.
The kitchen door slams again. “Lil! I just had—what’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Lily lies smoothly. She can’t clean up her mess until she knows how wrong she was. “Harry said you had a good talk. Tell me everything.”
James grins the kind of grin that used to make her dread dinner in the Great Hall and launches onto her chair.
“Our son,” he says proudly, “has a lovely garden.”
Harry comes back exactly twenty minutes later, tugged into the room by Dee.
“H says you were misguided and want to try again,” he says. “From Christmas. So. I am also willing. To do that.”
He plops onto the couch and pulls Harry into his lap. Harry kicks out and tries to slide away, but Dee holds steady.
“No, we talked about this. I am entitled to a comfort object during this trying time.”
Harry snorts and stops fighting. “I meant, like, one of the dungbombs Sirius sent you. Or a prank potion for their tea.”
Dee hums and doesn’t let him loose. “So, Mr. Potter. Thoughts on the garden? Too many potatoes, right?”
Lily turns to James. Apparently, they’re doing this.
“Not enough, I’d say. Very fond of potatoes myself.” James clears his throat. “And it’s James. I know I’ve apologized before, but I want to say it again to you. I’m sorry. I do want to try again.”
Dee nods. “I forgive you. Not for the potato thing. You’re a terrible influence for that.”
“He’s a terrible influence for most things,” Lily adds. She smiles tentatively at Harry and Dee, twined together as they are. “I’m also sorry, Dee. I was—the magical world was not welcoming to me, and I wanted to do better for others. I didn’t for you. I’m going to work on it.”
James finds her hand and gives it a squeeze.
“Alright. Thank you.” Dee smiles a mischief smile. “God, you’re both very serious. Tell me a horrible childhood story. H knows I used to hold talent shows for all my sister’s dolls and that I chipped a tooth trying to do a high kick like in A Chorus Line. Made my lisp worse, if you can believe such a thing is possible. Give me something worse than that on him.”
All of the Potters wince.
“That’s not really what it was like for me, growing up.” Harry catches one of Dee’s hands and messes about with his fingers, running his own along Dee’s knuckles. “I told you it was wartime.”
“So you never made a potion explode or flew your broom where you weren’t supposed to?” Dee blinks innocently. “Sounds like you. Model citizen.”
“Arsehole,” Harry says with feeling.
“He did smuggle a baby dragon, when he was eleven.” Lily smiles tentatively. “Because the man who was raising it lived in a wooden house. Regular bleeding heart.”
Dee crows and tightens his arms around Harry. “I knew it. I bloody knew it.”
James kisses the side of Lily’s head. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
Dinner that night is so good Lily keeps checking her food for enchantments.
Dee is quite the cook, and Harry’s quite the conversationalist these days. This place has been good for him. Dee’s been good for him. And doesn’t that burn, and chafe, and itch, to have been so wrong about it all?
About her only bloody kid. Merlin.
“Once I told him about magic, we got rid of the canning equipment.” Harry smiles softly when Dee’s hand comes to rest on the back of his neck. “Not that we used it much with our tiny window garden at the flat. But I still have scars from the steam.”
“You do not,” Dee argues without heat. “You magicked them away that very night.”
“Emotional,” Harry insists. “Painful, lasting, comprehensive emotional scars. How can one machine hate a person so—“
“Drama queen,” Dee tells James and Lily. “Nothing for it, I’m afraid. He keeps me in produce, so I’ve made my peace.”
James’s lip twitches.
“Sometimes I feel like it’s still with me, that infernal device,” Harry muses. “Like it’s talking in my ear. Mocking my suffering.”
Lily bursts out laughing, and James follows right after.
“Merlin, you two deserve each other,” she says. “How did you even meet? Did one of you start bantering and just wait for the other to catch up?”
Dee looks at Harry with a question in his eyes; Lily sees Harry give a barely perceptible nod.
Then Dee turns his attention back to them. “I was getting hassled on my way to work. On the tube. Normally not a big deal, given that I’m very—“
“Lovely,” Harry puts in.
“Obvious.” Dee rolls his eyes. “I’m conspicuous. But that day, it was getting…dangerous.”
Harry’s knuckles whiten as he tightens his grip on Dee’s hand.
“So I cast a confundus on the ringleader and made Dee get off the train early with me.” Harry looks at his dad. “Statute of limitations is up on any muggle-baiting charge. It was over two years ago now.”
“Harry, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Alright,” Dee says calmly. “Good. Anyway, H was a perfect gentleman and walked me to work. And I was a perfect bad influence, because I hid him in the stockroom during dinner service, snuck him a dozen eclairs because he’s far too skinny, and then took him home with me. And didn’t let him leave. Still haven’t.”
Harry nods gravely. “It’s been torture.”
God, these two. Lily snorts and motions for Dee to go on.
“He didn’t know a thing about London, which was odd. Since I met him there and all.” Dee leans over and kisses the side of Harry’s head. “So I took him on a proper tour over the next month or so. Did all the tourist traps, bought all the cheap tat. Then we walked by that one bridge that’d fallen in ‘97.”
“I had a panic attack,” Harry puts in. “Ran off, gave Dee a fright, showed up at Sirius and Remus’s cottage hyperventilating. They gave me three calming draughts and sent me up to bed, but I disapparated back to Dee’s. Broke their wards. Got a howler.”
Lily hadn’t heard a word of this. But she is now, so she listens.
“Which, incidentally, is how I found out about magic.” Dee rolls his eyes. “Trust Sirius to break your secrecy laws just so he could be dramatic about Harry.”
James laughs deep and long. “Merlin, you must have all of our numbers by now.”
“Anyway, then we did a less-fun tour. No snow globes to be found on the Voldemort circuit. But I learned a lot.” Dee scoots his chair closer to Harry’s and shepherds him under an arm. “Now summon the dessert, please. I’m quite comfortable.”
“You know, some people would say you’re using me for the magic.” Harry waves a hand in a crude approximation of a summoning charm and four plates and spoons float in from the kitchen. “Custard?”
“It’s just inside the icebox. Top left.”
Harry makes the same motion, and a bowl joins them.
“How long have you been able to do that?” Lily’s eyes narrow.
Harry shrugs. “You’re going to get mad.”
“We won’t,” James promises.
“I didn’t bring my wand when I left. I put it in a drawer in Remus’s study, warded it to my magic, and took a muggle bus from Wales.”
Lily wants to break something, but James promised. Fine. Fucking fine. So she takes a bite of the crumble, which is delicious. It makes her madder.
“You have your wand now,” she says instead. “You had it at Christmas.”
“Remus found it and read me the riot act a few months later. But I’d already learned to do little things. Quite by accident, actually. I threw up the first time I reheated my tea without meaning to.”
James leans forward to examine Harry’s face in the candlelight. “You talk about magic like—do you hate it?”
Dee takes a bite and watches Harry out of the corner of his eye.
“Hate is strong. You have to understand I never—Mum, you talk about magic like it saved you. And for Dad it’s this necessary fact of life. Like the sky’s blue. I—for me, it’s not like that. It hasn’t been something good that I like to—“
“You ended a war with it and it’s not something good?” Lily puts her spoon down.
Harry drops his eyes to his plate and clams up. He shrugs.
Damn it.
“He was in the middle of a sentence,” Dee says lightly. “Answering a question.”
“Sorry,” she says quickly. “I am. I’m sorry. I’m listening.”
“We want to know, love.” James is so much better at this than she is. Fuck. “You never loved school. I didn’t get it, because you did so well whenever you had to go up against—whenever your magic was really tested.”
“Prophecy and luck,” Harry says. “I remember.”
Lily winces at the memory. It was not one of James’s finer moments, roaring that his fourteen-year-old couldn’t rest on his laurels the day after Voldemort cast all three unforgivables at him.
“I’m starting to see what you mean.” James runs a hand through his hair. “Damn. Damn it.”
“If I’d been, like, an Arithmancy nerd,” Harry offers. “Wouldn’t that have been a distraction from what I had to do, anyway? What I had to focus on?”
Sirius made a similar point a few days after Christmas, but Lily hadn’t listened.
What has our world done for him, really, he’d said. Sat on our hands waiting for him to save us and then gawked at him like a sphinx in captivity once he did. He never had a chance.
“I know I have a lot of power to wield now.” Harry talks fast like he wants to get it all out before they stop him. Lily’s fault. She jumps in too early, arguing against feelings like they’ll respond to her arguments if she makes them listen before the emotions take root. “I do know that. I know it’s worthy stuff. I got that even when we rowed about it, before I left. And I went to that gala for Hermione a few months back, and I made that speech, and I just. I don’t know how to balance it all.”
That speech made Lily cry, full of pointed remarks about how it’s all well and good that they won, but the wixen world can’t only listen when Harry talks. How lasting peace comes only if they create lasting change. And how Lily is the most magically talented person he knows. Not witch. Not muggleborn. He said person.
“It was a great speech,” James says softly.
“Was it?” Dee scrapes his spoon along his plate, drawing attention. “H didn’t talk for three days after. Glad to hear it went over well.”
“Sweetheart.” Lily puts her spoon down. “Hazza, love. I’m so sorry.”
She’d gone quiet, too. When the Death Eaters focused their bigoted magic theft arguments and aimed them at her. So powerful, so all that magic must have come from somewhere. Someone. Multiple pureblood someones, they guessed.
James had waited her out. Hadn’t argued. Let her be mad, and scared, and hurt. Held her afterward.
But here she’s been, arguing. Rushing it. Rushing Harry.
“It hasn’t been easy for anyone,” Harry says like a refrain. Like it’s practiced. Come to think of it, Remus and Sirius say the same thing sometimes. Usually about Harry.
“Hang everyone.” There’s her James. Stubborn to the last. At least she’s in agreement with the stand he’s taking. “We’re talking about you, love.”
Harry watches them. Dee too. Assessing.
“What can we do?” Lily clears her throat; her voice comes out ragged. “Can we do anything?”
Harry bites his lip.
James notices first. “Say it, love. We want to hear it.”
“It’s nice that you’re here,” he says softly. “I—um. I didn’t think I’d see you? After Christmas. So this is nice.”
It’s far less than he could demand. It’s not even a demand at all.
Lily and James share a look, the two of them in perfect agreement. They won’t let him down again.
“Of course we came,” James says. “Of course. The two of you—it’s beautiful, your home.”
“Beautiful wine cellar, too.” Dee breaks the tension with expert precision. “Would either of you like to help me find a bottle?”
Lily nods and goes. She sees James come around the table toward Harry’s seat as they leave. It makes her eyes burn.
“Wow,” she manages when they get down the last of the stairs. Her hip hasn’t been the same since a badly done patrol in ‘95, but Dee takes her pace and doesn’t say a word. “It’s—wow. Look at all that food.”
“H is a dab hand.” Dee smiles, the way he does when he talks about her son. Godric, he’s good for Harry. Good to him. “He’s going to be shy about inviting you to take some. If you ask before he can offer, I’ll slip you a tenner. And not just because we’ve got too much squash. Make sure you get some chilli jam.”
“I owe you more than a tenner.” She smiles to soften the words. “But I will happily take your food. He really grew all this?”
“It’s fun to watch him out there. Ask your husband. And maybe go with him tomorrow. He’ll try to slip away early, especially because he talked so much tonight.”
Dee opens a side door and they’re in a meticulously organized wine cellar.
He smiles when he sees her calculating look. “I think it’s called an undetectable extension charm? Or expansion, maybe. Remus suggested it. He’s all about getting H to use magic just for fun or to make his life easier.”
“Good strategy.” Merlin, it burns that Sirius and Remus have been here enough to make suggestions like that. Nothing for it, though. “Red or white?”
They bring their bottle back upstairs and give it to Harry to open and pour. Then they settle in the sitting room. Dee puts on a record. Harry comes back with three glasses and a fizzy water for himself.
James frowns when he sees. “Do you not—“
“Not really a taste for it. And I don’t, uh. Like losing control? So I don’t usually.”
“Which is a pity, because he has a great palate.” Dee smooths the way again. “He picked this one out for my birthday. Want to try it, H?”
Harry takes Dee’s glass and a tiny sip. “Yeah, it’s good.”
Dee rolls his eyes. “Good, he says. Pairs perfectly with all the food we just ate, great for a spring night. Not too bitter, or rich, or vinegary like that one I chose last week. But sure, it’s good. You poet.”
Lily laughs and takes her own sip. “What Dee said.”
Then she turns to Harry. “Dee showed me the charms on the cellar. Any other magic uses of note around here?”
Harry hums, thinking. “Day-to-day, not really. Sometimes when we go out.”
For the first time, Dee hesitates. “I have him cast a notice-me-not on me, sometimes? When we go into town.”
James frowns but doesn’t speak. So Lily follows his lead.
“I think I mentioned, I’m very—“
“Gorgeous,” Harry puts in.
Dee rolls his eyes, coming back to himself. “Obvious. Obviously gay. You magicals are like aliens, you know.”
“Sirius told us it’s different in the muggle world,” James says slowly. “For two men.”
“It can be,” Harry says. He takes Dee’s free hand and rubs over his knuckles. “And this town isn’t as big as London. We stick out.”
“I stick out,” Dee says. “You don’t get clocked near as much when I’m not with you.”
Harry agrees easily. “The snogging does tip people off.”
“Arse. Anyway, it’s worth it and I like dressing how I dress and all that. But some days I like to pick up eggs without the disapproving glances. So, magic.”
Lily’s heart hurts for them, noticeable in the muggle world and scandalous in the magical.
“What made you leave London? If you didn’t stick out.”
“I burned out.” Dee hands his glass to Harry, who refills it with a finger tap to the stem. “I was working crazy hours, and I never got to see H in the daylight, and I burned my hand badly working with spun sugar one day and quit in a big huff.”
“And he’d inherited this place when his dad passed,” Harry puts in. “Had lodgers, but they’d given notice.”
“Arsehole lodgers,” Dee says. “With arsehole taste and suspicious stains on the carpet.”
“So he had a project, and a break. And new flooring to sort.” Harry rolls his eyes and summons another plate of crumble for Dee, who accepts it with a quick kiss to Harry’s ear. “Anyone else?”
James nods, and Harry sends him a plate.
Lily smiles when James immediately gets custard on his nose. “How’s the break treating you, Dee?”
“Oh, I barely lasted a month. I work at a faffy place in town now. H keeps me in all the produce I want, so I get to make whatever suits me. And the hours are a dream. It’s better.”
“I’m still on break,” Harry puts in helpfully. “Not that I had a job before. Still a layabout. A wastrel.”
“A sabbatical,” Lily offers. “Anything keeping you busy outside the garden? You mentioned reading.”
Harry smiles at her. Merlin, it’s—the first real one she’s seen. In far too long. “Not really. Seeing what I like to do. I bug Dee at work constantly.”
“He plays the piano and guitar,” Dee adds. “He doesn’t think he’s good, which is an entire crock of—“
“Piano?” Lily saw the unassuming instrument tucked into the far corner of the room when they arrived—Merlin, just last night. She’d assumed it was Dee’s, or a show piece. Silly of her. Harry’s honest to his bones. “Can you play us something?”
“Dee just said I wasn’t any good,” Harry protests. “I’m sparing you. Really.”
“Not what I said.” Dee pushes at Harry’s shoulder until he stands up, frowning. “Go on.”
“You have to keep talking, though.” Harry crosses the room and sits on the bench. “Don’t all sit there in silence watching me. I mean it.”
James grins and loudly asks Dee to tell him Harry’s most embarrassing story since they got together.
But Harry’s not actually listening, anymore. He’s playing something that seems more complicated than a beginner piece. She knows what he asked, but she can’t follow a word of the conversation, lost in watching him do something he does just for fun.
There’s a little smile tugging at his lips as he turns the page and keeps playing. He likes it, then.
Then he switches to a new song and starts singing.
“Oi,” Dee calls. “Can someone find that dying bird and put it out of its misery?”
Harry laughs and changes tune, still singing. “Why are you so mean to me,” he croons. “Why must you be mean to me?”
Dee shoots him the V, then smiles and goes back to his story, satisfied. Harry goes back to what he was playing before.
James stares.
“You know, I worked hard on that one,” Harry says when he’s done.
“I don’t believe you.” Dee’s obviously teasing. “What was it, Boy Who Lied? Sounds about right to me.”
Lily braces for impact. From the corner of her eye she sees James do the same.
But then, a miracle. Harry snorts. He climbs onto the couch, knees up like a little heathen, and doesn’t shout at all. “Your information’s out of date. I’m a hero now. Bow and scrape, go on.”
James wipes his eyes.
Lily feels some burden lift off her shoulders. Not all of it, but some. A large bit.
“Not on your life.” Dee pushes at Harry’s feet until he puts them back on the ground. “James, alright?”
James waves a hand and mutters something about this being his last glass. He gets like this when he gets emotional. Tries to hide.
Funny that they didn’t figure Harry out sooner. He’s following some obvious patterns, after all.
“I’m for bed,” Harry decides. “If you’re staying the night, need anything? Otherwise I can drop the apparition wards.”
“Leave them up.” Lily accepts Dee’s hand to help her off the sofa she’s sunken into. “Please. If we can stay we’re staying.”
“Brunch service at the resto tomorrow for me,” Dee says. “I’ll clear this up and join you, H.”
James rushes after him. “I’ll handle cleanup. Just show me where things go, yeah?”
Dee agrees and takes him to the kitchen.
Harry lifts a hand in a halfhearted wave. “Night, Mum.”
Lily rolls her eyes and opens her arms. “Get over here, love.”
By some blessing, Harry goes.
“Night,” she murmurs into his wild hair. “You wonder. Need a hand in the garden tomorrow? I hate when your dad has all the fun.”
“Sure,” Harry says quickly. “Yes. I’d like that.”
“No magic, he said.” Lily kisses Harry’s cheek. Anything to prolong this hug. She’s missed Harry so awfully. Like her favorite sweater on a cold day. “Fine by me. I want to see the flowers especially. Mine had a devil of a time last year, even with the spells.”
“Fucking gloomy,” Harry agrees. “This is a long hug.”
“I’m making up for…two and a half? Two and a half years. Give me a few more minutes.”
Like she’s cut his strings, Harry goes limp. “I really am sorry.”
Lily rocks a bit side to side. She doesn’t let go, swaying Harry with her. “You really don’t have to apologize.”
“Alright, limpets. Save something for tomorrow,” James says from the kitchen. His voice is thick like he’s been crying. Haven’t they all. “Lil, bed?”
“Oh, alright. Spoilsport.” Lily lets go but leans in for a quick kiss to Harry’s forehead. “Sleep well, love. Wake me for gardening.”
Harry does another halfhearted wave and goes.
The next morning dawns hopeful and sunny. No gloom in sight.
Lily’s waiting in the kitchen when Harry stumbles in just after six. He doesn’t startle—so that instinct hasn’t eased yet, post-battle—but he does offer to put the kettle on.
“Not a morning person, you.” He rubs his hair, which is sticking up funny in the back. “Or has that changed?”
“Just excited to see you.” Lily runs a hand over his cowlicks fondly. “Still hate this bloody hour. Tea would be a dream.”
Harry snorts and sets the kettle to boil. “Watch the spout,” he says. “I did it by magic a few too many mornings at first. Now it’s got a bit of a complex.”
Lily watches him work, pulling down muffins and spreading them with butter before handing a plate to her.
“What would you like to see?” He asks. “I’ve got a few things to check, but it’s mostly watering and tidying. I can give you the whole tour, but it’ll take a bit.”
Lily grabs onto the offer with both hands and holds firm. “Tour, please. Let me keep you company.”
“Alright. We have to take all these chillis out with us. Can you get the door?”
“You’re planting chillis?”
“Nah.” Harry smiles and opens the greenhouse door. “Just giving them a change of scenery. Uh, tour stop one. Mind your step. I ran out of shelf space.”
Lily looks around and smiles softly. It’s so alive. Chaotic, but lovely. Very him. “I like it. I can feel you here.”
“Really?” Harry tilts his head, an affectation he learned from his godfather, who learned it from being a dog. “That’s a nice thing to say.”
“Come on.” Lily takes Harry’s now-free hand once he sets his chillis down. “You have to tell me about everything.”
They fall into a nice working rhythm, when Lily asks if she can help. Get her hands dirty.
“We can repot the nasturtiums. Nasturtium? One of those.”
Harry shows her how to dig little holes and prick out the seedlings, then put them in new, larger pots.
“I envy you,” Lily tells him. “You’ve learned so much doing this by hand. I’m positive these are in my garden, but I never even learned their name. Let alone the bit about pest control.”
“I like it,” Harry says simply. “I like learning about it.”
“Do you remember,” she says, testing. “How Hermione would yell, that last year? Running down the stairs with a book, shouting—“
“I really have it this time.” Harry smiles. “Yeah. Being fair, she did at the end.”
“Girl who cried Horcrux.”
Harry actually laughs at that. “I’ll have to tell her that. She’ll send back a treatise.”
“So you write her?” Lily clears her throat. She’s in it, now. “Ron? Ginny and them?”
“Not often.” Harry doesn’t yell or roll his eyes. A fair start. “I tell Hedwig to take her time, when I send her. But I’ve heard from them all since Christmas, of course.”
“Word traveled on that one.”
“No, you went to Molly Weasley for tea and sympathy on that one.” His voice doesn’t sound angry, but he’s definitely stepping lightly now. “Was bound to spread amongst the redheads. Even Fleur wrote me.”
“I shouldn’t.” Lily clears her throat and pats the soil of her last plant again. “Have done that. I shouldn’t have.”
Harry shrugs. “Didn’t change much. Hermione still owls me NEWT dates, and Ron still passes along job openings in Dad’s department. They just want—“
He breaks off with a sigh.
“They miss you,” Lily says. “I believe that much.”
“They mostly miss how it was. They want me to finish my strop and come slot back in.” Harry rearranges a few plants, but it seems to be more for something to do. Nothing really moves far. “During that first summer, I couldn’t. Be that person. If I ever was. They had trouble with that. We had maybe worse rows than you and I did.”
Lily’s eyebrows shoot up. “Worse than the bread?”
Harry nods, a smile tugging at one side of his mouth. “Worse than when you and Dad made appointments for all those exams.”
“Oh. Oh Merlin, I’d actually blocked that out.”
“Then you can sit my Mind Magic NEWT,” Harry teases. “If they’ll let you reschedule. I was pants at it.”
“We weren’t fair at all.”
Lily runs her fingers through the tub of compost they worked from. It’s soothing. Cool and dirty. Heh. Grounding. Ground-ing. Her emotions are so frayed. That’s a horrible joke.
“Mum?” Harry looks at her, one hand sifting compost absently. She must look a fright. “Want to see the raised beds? Dad did a halfway decent job, but don’t tell him I said so.”
Lily nods fervently and goes.
When they tromp back inside an hour later, she’s carrying a few seed packets and loose sheets of notebook paper with scribbled directions. Harry’s spiky lettering soothes something jagged in her chest.
James stops short with a muffin half-in his mouth when he sees them.
“Oh,” he says mournfully through his food. “You two have been scheming.”
Harry grins, so Lily lets one stretch across her face to match.
“Where’s Sirius, then?” Harry asks innocently.
James makes a muffled noise of protest and lunges, but Harry’s too sharp. He dodges. Then he pats at the towels and tea things strewn about the kitchen—James is a disaster—until he makes a noise of triumph and lifts James’s two-way mirror like a prize.
“Padfoot. So unexpected to see you this morning.”
Sirius shrieks and there’s a clatter; he’s thrown his own bloody mirror across the room.
Remus’s long-suffering face appears after a moment of silence. “Siri, what are—“ he gives a yell when he sees Harry smiling back. “Harry? Why do you have your dad’s—Sirius Black, you meddling little—“
“It did work this time,” James calls. “I can hardly believe it either.”
Remus blinks, startled in that polite way he gets where he won’t say a single incriminating thing. “Harry? You’re having a…good visit?”
“Great,” Harry says with a slight smile. “Dee’s been corrupting Mum about wine, though.”
Remus hisses. “No. That swill last week tasted like balsamic.”
“He mentioned.” Lily pokes her head in a corner and waves, just once. She and Remus have been butting heads about this since before Harry made contact all those months ago. Before it all went wrong again. “He said you had the idea to extend the wine cellar. Smart, but that’s not a surprise.”
Sirius pipes up, incorrigible. “It’s going swimmingly,” he tells Moony. “So I was right, and everyone should really be thanking me, and I’ve heard lovely things about the new Comet 7500.”
James laughs, booming and real. Merlin, Lily’s missed it. “You’re too old. Your little frail knees will creak.”
“My—“ Sirius’s mouth drops open. He seems to actually be lost for words. “I’m younger than you. Moony, I’m six months younger than him.”
“Aw.” Remus tuts. “His mind’s going, poor thing. Happens in old age.” Then he winks at Harry. “Have fun, kiddo.”
The connection closes over Sirius’s protests that Remus is also older, and the mirror goes dark.
“So.” Harry tosses the mirror back to James. “What shall we do next?”
Lily and James grab each other’s hands. They did it. They have him. He’s not hexing them, or running, or closing his eyes for too long.
“Whatever you want,” James tells him.
Harry smiles, slow-dawning but potent. He’s got a plan, then. It won’t be like Horcrux hunting, or going over media strategy. It’ll be different this time.
Good. It’s about time to try something new.