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Chapter Text

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xxiv. out of stones (ones that stand)

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May, that year, is a blur. A blur of funerals and tears at The Burrow, of thoughts of Fred and Firewhisky. It lies in a pool of glittering amber at the bottom of carved crystal glasses and burns Harry’s throat when it courses down his body, sits in his stomach filling up space like a cushion - a nice, comforting buzz in his head. By day, the alcohol loosens tongues and eases smiles, drunken stories and games under the dimming sun. By night, it worsens the nightmares and so he stays awake, watches the ceiling move, the room spinning around him like in the eye of a tornado. 

In ‘98, they don’t get the luxury of hindsight. Hermione doesn’t yet know she will eventually get her parents back - a version of them, at least - and Ron doesn’t yet understand that the pain of losing Fred will abate with time but always remain and simmer under the surface, ready to boil back up at the first whiff of spring. The way that Harry will have to explain all of this to his children someday, the way they will ask him questions about the war that he’ll have to answer, ten or fifteen years from now, doesn’t occur to him. It takes a while to understand even, that this story is a story about war. That perhaps, war isn’t just the ‘state of armed conflict’ the dictionaries love describing.

To him - to them - war is: memories. Consequences he lives with. Wars are: metaphorical - larger than life, larger than him. A desire to survive adversity, fight for the things and for the people we believe in. Wars kill us; perhaps they also make us human. Wars are: what comes afterwards. The ruins of medieval castles and the fires that took cathedrals. This perennial need to rebuild. For faith. For love. Even when History heartlessly continues to repeat itself, even through the destructions and the heartaches, and even when sometimes, it all feels absurd. Except, is it absurd? Maybe, giving up is what’s absurd.

Wars are: flurries of snow. The dark of February nights. Little frozen flakes that melt as soon as they touch the ground; you see them mapped out against the black wool of thick winter coats, against the leather of expensive and elegant gloves. The steps down to the Tube stations are muddy and slippery, dotted with the crunch of salt. 

War is: James. He is so small. Scrunched up against the bare skin of his father’s chest, the first hours of life, a hospital room and its bright lights. He is breathtakingly perfect. His little nails peek out as he tries to suck on his fist, and his little eyes shut tight. Harry decides he will never sleep again. Never work again. Never stop looking at him again. 

Ginny is in bed, her gaze on them. There are endless bags under her eyes and the monitor next to her steadily beeps. She smiles. ‘It ends with us,’ Ginny tells him. ‘The war - everything. We don’t make it their problem.’

He agrees. That’ll be their fight, he thinks. 

James is the first question. The first snowflakes, the first trial at everything. He is almost four, that day, playing with his fire engine on the kitchen table at The Burrow. It is morning, Boxing Day. A thin layer of frost painted the grass white outside. Harry steps back as Ginny comes down with Lily, still sleepy in her arms. ‘I’m glad we stayed over,’ she smiles. They decided to divide and conquer last night, try and beat the lingering excitement of Christmas presents and too much sugar. He stayed in Charlie’s room with James and Al; she with the baby in hers. ‘How’d you sleep?’

Harry closes the door to the garden, heading back into the living room. ‘Meh,’ he shrugs. She lightly chuckles. ‘Al’s still down.’ He nods at the stairs. Left the baby monitor with her parents in the kitchen. ‘James woke up so we came here.’ She silently nods. ‘He’s still playing with that thing, by the way.’ Harry raises his eyebrows in a disbelieving, exhausted sort of look. It’s: that thing with the loud siren and the rattling wheels that Uncle George clearly gave his nephew because he hates his parents. Ginny snorts. 

At the kitchen table, Mrs Weasley is serving breakfast. There are beans and toasts and eggs - too much food again. Ron and Hermione are also here with Rose; she is pregnant with Hugo but no one knows. Enjoying the last few hours of Arthur and Molly’s offer to help everyone look after their respective children.

Ginny asks: ‘Mum, can you pass me the juice?’ 

Mrs Weasley smiles. 

Sitting next to Harry on an old, wooden chair that is much too low for him, James lets go of his toy. His head and shoulders are barely peeking out from under the table top; he watches the interaction between Ginny and her mother with keen interest. The glass bottle of pumpkin juice travels between them over the table. James looks at his grandmother, eyes open wide in absolute shock. ‘Grandma?’ (‘Yes, sweetheart?’) ‘Are you Mummy’s mummy?’

Mrs Weasley bursts out a laugh. In fairness, so does Ginny. So does: everyone else around the table, actually. It’s the tone of surprise that gets Harry, like this is the wildest of discoveries. Children are like that. They say the funniest things. They make him smile, regardless of the world outside. ‘Well, yes, love,’ Mrs Weasley patiently responds. ‘I’m your mummy’s mummy and your grandpa is your mummy’s daddy.’ From the way James reacts to this news, staring at everyone, wide-eyed and absolutely flabbergasted, we are going from one shocking discovery to the next. He frowns. ‘But…’ His little brain is clearly in overdrive. ‘Mummy is just my mummy.’

Harry laughs. ‘Well, no.’ The last ripples of chuckles are still grazing his breaths. ‘Mummy is also Al and Lily’s mummy, right?’ He smiles. ‘Remember? We’ve talked about that. Sharing?’

James lets out a little exasperated sigh. 

A very long, laborious and hilarious explanation about family relationships ensues, that morning. James is starting to put it all together in his little brain and he’s got - well, Questions. Mummy is mummy to him, and to Al and to Lily. But: Uncle Ron is Uncle Ron but also Mummy’s brother, like Albus is James’s brother. And: Auntie Hermione is Auntie Hermione but she’s also Rose’s mummy? Rose has a mummy? (‘Yes, James, everyone has a mummy,’ Harry grins). Grandma and Grandpa are Mummy and Uncle Ron’s Mummy and Daddy and - wow, mind blown. Barely eight o’clock in the morning and everything is new already. 

And: Harry sees it coming. The question. He thinks everyone else does, too. Feels the room tense, little by little as James gets further down his game of who’s who, people trying unsuccessfully to change the subject. Weirdly, the awkwardness does not get to him. Instead, he patiently listens as his son relates to him his fascinating discovery for the fourth time - did you hear that, Dad? Did you know that Grandma is… James frowns again. Cocks his head a little to the side. ‘But, Dad?’

‘Hm…?’ Harry smiles.

‘Where is your mummy and daddy?’

‘James!’ 

It’s Mrs Weasley. The hiss makes Harry jump a little. The tip of James’s finger is tracing patterns on his empty plate, pushing remnants of egg around. She somehow materialises next to him, grabbing the plate, firm - James also jumps in surprise.

‘Don’t do that, it’s dirty. And, that’s enough with the questions, already. Give me your hand.’ She quickly Scourgifies the stickiness off him. ‘Didn’t you want to play? Finish your juice and we’ll -’

‘No.’

Mrs Weasley freezes. 

Harry’s snapped, he realises. Didn’t mean to. The room’s suddenly gone very quiet. He’s never snapped at Ginny’s parents before. In hindsight (again), it will get easier with time, setting boundaries with Mr and Mrs Weasley and saying ‘no’ to them when he needs to. When the kids are small, though, it still isn’t an exercise Harry is particularly comfortable with. It feels risky. Like they might not want him, or love him anymore. And, sure, after Ginny opened up about her experiences, about the way she viewed her own childhood, after they talked about Arthur’s moralising tone and Molly’s tendency to shame, Harry started to timidly push back a bit. Mostly to defend her, sometimes. Like: ‘Ginny’s career is as important as mine’ when James was born. Molly claimed playing Quidditch was a silly little enterprise. But - it was never like this. 

James is doing this thing he does, now. Shyly looking at his hands, his little chin quivering like he knows he’s been a bit naughty. Made a mistake. ‘Hey, look at me,’ Harry says. He turns the chair sideways with his foot; James lifts his large brown eyes with his head still hanging low, his irises past his long lashes. Harry gently touches his arm. He wills his voice to be reassuring. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong, yeah? It’s a very good question.’ James pouts like: really? Harry nods, forcing himself to keep smiling. ‘How about we talk about it later? After -’

‘Oh, Harry, dear,’ Mrs Weasley starts again. ‘I don’t think that’s very wise -’

There’s a glare. It’s automatic. The kind of feeling in his stomach like he would kill anyone who dared hurt his child, even if it was her. ‘I’m not lying to him,’ he snaps. This visceral desire to cover James ears, too, because Daddy is never supposed to get really really cross, and Daddy never ever shouts. Without really meaning to, his palm hits the table in a dull thud. Molly jumps. 

‘Harry -’ Hermione stresses. And, Ron: ‘Mate -’ 

In, and out. He breathes. ‘I was lied to by adults, continuously, from the age of one to the age of seventeen.’ It takes all he has in him not to shout. ‘I am not doing that to him.’ Mrs Weasley opens her mouth again; he ignores her. ‘Come on, James,’ he says, faking a smile again, grabbing his son and lifting him up in his arms. James looks mildly upset, trying to grab an unfinished bit of chocolate off the table. ‘Let’s go check on your brother, yeah?’

The fury is all consuming. Upstairs, it boils his blood and catches his breath; there is no outlet. He can’t punch a wall or go on a run, miles and miles under his trainers. He lowers James down, his son escapes his grasp to crawl-walk towards his new Christmas presents. Al is awake, calmly sitting on his blow-up mattress on the floor, fascinated with his own foot. Harry stands, his back against the wall, closing his eyes for a second. Two seconds. Five seconds. He tries to focus on his heartbeat. Years and years later, his therapist tells him: ‘Well, that’s triggering to you. Lying to the kids about important things.’

With the help of his wand, he prepares a bottle for Al. Gets them both dressed with whatever clothes he’s packed in their bags. Stays active - does something. James wants to run the bloody fire engine around the room again, and Al wants to go see Mummy, why can’t we go see Mummy? The room’s too small for the both of them, and -

‘Hey,’ the door opens. 

He breathes again. 

Ginny is standing at the threshold. Kind, and calm, and smiling. He sits on the bed again. ‘Lily’s with Hermione,’ she says. ‘You okay?’

Harry sighs. He takes his glasses off for a moment, runs a tired hand over his face. Fingers pushing against his eyelids. Al excitedly toddles over towards Ginny as he puts them back on, gripping at the bedframe and at the fabric of his father’s jeans, around his knee. Harry absentmindedly makes his brother’s Muggle train circle around with his wand again. He crosses Ginny’s gaze. ‘Not really, no,’ he admits. Clearly. 

Her mouth twists. 

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped, I -’

‘Hey,’ she stops him. There is a shake of her head; her gaze feels like a soft, feather-light touch against his face. ‘I’m with you. We said no extendable ears. I don’t want to lie to them either.’ 

‘Yeah.’ 

Again, there’s always the bravery of bold decisions made in the moment and then, the reality of them. Harry wonders: how do you protect a child from the horrors of war, from the things children should never have to see, when at three years old, you also have to explain his grandparents are dead? Where is the balance in that? Ginny’s head is cocked to the side; Al has reached her, his little arms all stretched up, fingers clawing at her bare legs. ‘Mama!’ 

‘I have to say, you’re very sexy when you stand up to my mother,’ she smirks. Harry snorts - just a little bit. 

Later, he is alone with James. Sitting on an old rug draping ancient wooden floorboards. They’ve let their son’s hair grow too long, past his ears; it gives him this awful, Paul McCartney sort of cut, paired with Harry’s terribly messy implementation. It’s a mess. James’s hair is brown, but it glows a bit dark red in the sun. ‘Hey, mate?’ Harry says.

James looks up from the train, and the fire engine. There’s that sorry look of having misbehaved again. Harry wishes he could just love it away. ‘D’you remember what you asked me downstairs?’ James fixates down on his toys. ‘James?’

Another shy look past his eyelashes. Harry doesn’t change the subject. There is a little nod. 

‘What did you ask?’

‘But Grandma said -’

Harry shakes his head. Kind, he tries to smile again. ‘We don’t listen to Grandma,’ he pauses. ‘Well, not for this, anyway.’ Harry reaches out to touch James’s face, titling it up again. ‘I’m sorry she got cross. That wasn’t right. And, I’m sorry I got cross as well. I’m sorry I scared you, okay?’ Harry stops. There’s that little quivering chin again. ‘Hey, come here,’ he says.

There are: big, big tears, this time. Big hugs, in the quiet of Charlie’s old bedroom. James finally calms down. Harry explains the inexplicable, that day. ‘My mummy and daddy - your other grandparents - they’re -’ He purses his lips, tries to think. ‘D’you remember Auntie Muriel?’ he asks instead.

James nods. That’s an easy question with an easy correct answer. ‘Yes.’ The enthusiasm of a child getting something right. ‘She’s dead!’

Harry puffs out a laugh. It’s the tone, you know? Maybe, he and Ginny weren’t… sad or solemn enough. He chuckles to himself. ‘That’s right, yeah. D’you know what that means?’

James seems to think a little. His brows furrow. ‘That we can’t see her anymore?’

Harry’s breath catches in his throat. For a moment, he ponders. ‘Yeah, I suppose.’ In a way, yeah. That’s all death is. You can’t see people anymore. 

‘Is your mummy and daddy dead?’

Harry closes his eyes, this time. A little pang - that. It’s not James’s fault. He’s not even four. He’ll have to live with it his whole life. The war. The things that will remain, even if it does end with them. ‘Yeah.’ Harry nods. James is listening intently, now, his toys long forgotten. He seems - disappointed. ‘Is that okay?’ 

James stares. Then, there is a big, solemn and sad nod. ‘I wish we can see them,’ he explains.

Harry swallows. The tears cloud his eyes. Oof. ‘Me too,’ he says. God, I wish they could see you. 

‘Why?’ James asks.

‘Why are they dead?’

‘Yeah.’

Hm. Yeah, that. ‘There was a bad man who -’ Harry hesitates. ‘There was a bad man who made them dead. But, he’s gone now. He’s never coming back ever again.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay.’

It’s okay. 

All pressed so close in Harry’s arms, that morning, James smells of chocolate and of the baby shampoo Ginny buys for the kids. Strawberries and bananas. He is so warm and alive and - Harry pulls back. ‘When we get home, I can show you pictures, how about that?’

James smiles, enthusiastically nods. ‘Yeah.’

Harry decides war is a pack of cigarettes. One he carries everywhere in his pocket. 

The thing he and Ginny later discover with their children is: sometimes, your own kids will try to protect you. In that case, war is: a torrent of water and mud that you’re desperately trying to run through a funnel, and it pathetically wash you down. 

Albus isn’t one to ask questions. Albus is - well, it’s complicated. Ron jokingly says he suffers from ‘chronic middle-child syndrome,’ either constantly trying to get noticed or painfully shy, but Harry doesn’t think Albus is shy. Albus is just - independent. He has Ginny’s free spirit and his father’s tendency to stay in his own thoughts a bit too much. That’s something they keep an eye on. 

Ginny always jokes that he is their eldest. Best marks, most responsible, always leading the way. He is caring and careful, constantly looking out for the other two. Even as a toddler, he is the one telling James not to put his fingers in the outlets (but: ‘Mum! James is so dumb!’ he also says), or telling Lily to wear her jumper. ‘Be careful, it’s cold out.’ 

Albus isn’t fearless, but he is awfully courageous: the first in his family to do GCSEs and A-levels on top of his O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. He is breaking generational cycles, he’ll have you know. The first of their three children to move out, on his own dime at that, even while James seems more preoccupied with syphoning his inheritance pie. Albus is also the first of their children to fall in love - like, really, really in love - and Harry thinks it is a beautiful thing, that. He and Scorpius are Hogwarts sweethearts that stand the test of time in their own, little adult apartment. Albus invites his parents for tea and the boys’ living room is tidier than Harry and Ginny’s has ever been. They sort of look at each other like: ‘Are you sure we raised him?’ The boys have organic herbal tea to offer and two different brands of almond milk. Al is doing just fine, Harry reckons.  

He and his father are close, though. People who think otherwise just don’t know their family very well, don’t know that they are both just - discreet. Al struggles with the same things Harry’s always struggled with. Al hates the attention. Al hates the gossip. Al hates the press, the fame; Al wants to put his head down and do his thing. He loathes the rumours that follow his father’s name, loathes the comparisons people always make. ‘How can you be so bad at Quidditch? Were you adopted?’ and ‘Why are you in Slytherin, Potter?’ Al thinks his relationship with his parents is no one else’s business.

Harry - well, he would strangle these fuckers with his bare hands if he could. Al knows it. That’s why he doesn’t always say much. Out of their three children, he is the one who most wants to protect them - his parents. They have been through a lot and, while he is not a violent child, he still takes on duels with kids twice his size when they talk shit about his mother. He tells his dad Auntie Hermione was wrong to sack him because the people demonstrating outside the Ministry were absolutely vile, and he refuses to talk to her after that, for a long while. 

It’s the reason why when Al has issues, Harry and Ginny unfortunately often find out through other people. It’s something they have to learn to navigate. Al won’t come to them to complain, won’t ask questions, won’t be like James. He will take matters into his own hands. When he gets into fights and wins them, they find out through McGonagall. When Hermione and Ron watch the kids for an afternoon, it is through her that they find out there was a problem, a couple weeks later. ‘Harry,’ she says, I’m so, so sorry -’

Harry grits his teeth, then. 

Ginny finds the book. It was hidden behind Al’s wardrobe. Harry doesn’t blame Al for it, doesn’t shout at his son when he comes home from Muggle primary school. Instead, he holds his baby so tight in his arms. Albus sits on his bed; Harry crouches down at his level. ‘Why did you take it?’ he says. ‘You know, if you have any questions at all, your mum and I -’

But: Al struggles to breathe with the flood of tears in his eyes. An eight year old child who got caught with his hand in the till. ‘And sometimes - sometimes when James asks - when James asks you’re sad,’ he lets out. ‘You and Mum get sad, and -’

Harry’s heart breaks. ‘Oh, baby.’ Al is a lot like Ginny. He’s got her emotional intelligence, can read people in a way that Harry never could. It’s what makes her a formidable journalist and storyteller, but it’s also a burden. ‘You don’t have to protect us. We’re your parents. It’s the other way around,’ he smiles. 

Al shakes his little head a bit; he is concerned: ‘Are you cross with Auntie Hermione? Because, she didn’t give me the book, I nicked it off the bookshelf, I -’

Harry almost laughs. Pulls Al towards him so close again and gives him a long, long hug. To be fully transparent, he is cross with Hermione because 1) she gave money to that idiot (‘But, Harry, I just wanted to know what she was saying -’), and 2) she left the book unattended within reach of his children. But. Well. ‘I know, I know. It’s okay,’ he says. 

The book sits on Al’s bedside table, that day. They loosely flick through it together. There is Harry’s picture on the front cover, surrounded by moving patterns and text rolling about, an additional flashing sign from Flourish & Blotts signalling that Hermione got it at a discount. Only 4 Galleons and 16 Sickles - a real bargain, that. Behind Harry Potter’s Scar: A Life of Triumph and Tragedy by Rita Skeeter. For the love of Godric Gryffindor. ‘Wasn’t she in jail?’ Ginny laughed when it came out. Harry groaned. 

‘She got out.’

Rita Skeeter, the bane of his existence, wrote a book full of shite to try and buy her credibility back, and he is now the one sentenced to talk to his son about it. Life is terribly unfair, Harry will also have you know. Especially, because: there is some truth to parse out of the rubbish in that book. No, not the stuff about how he got bullied so bad in Hogwarts he once tried to escape and was kept hostage by Albus Dumbledore in his office for months on end (shockingly, not true) or the bizarre insinuations that he and Hermione had sex in the tent but that he ultimately rejected her, which led her to settle for Ron (no comment). There is: the tension in his shoulders. The difficulty in admitting things he wishes his children never, ever had to know. ‘Yeah, I did die, that’s true,’ he tells Al. When you are three, death is just that you can’t see people, anymore. When you are eight, it’s - more real. Al nods. ‘I’m sorry,’ Harry adds, that evening. ‘I should have told you sooner. I didn’t want you to find out like this,’ he admits. 

They make that mistake with Al. They wait for questions that never come. Although, after the excruciating ordeal of having to explain the concept of Horcruxes to an eight year old, there is that one, though: ‘But, Dad -’ Big wide eyes. ‘Are you alright?’

Harry smiles. ‘Yeah, mate, I’m alright. Come here,’ he says, again. Close. He holds his children close, all the time, because there will be a day when he is no longer able to hold them. When they will have to figure things out on their own. And, Al is always the one who knows too much for his age. The one Harry most wishes he could protect from everything else. 

Out of all their kids, there is also a child Harry helped raise that the press never talks about. Having another last name and a different legal guardian sometimes means that Teddy lucked out. He is: Harry and Ginny’s secret baby. One they share with a grandmother who loves him to the ends of the Earth, and they would both give their lives for him. Teddy is: James’s big brother. He is the first of the little ones Harry has to awkwardly give The Talk to, because Andromeda is like: ‘That is not my problem.’ He is: Harry’s biggest parenting trial, too. The very first-draft-y, unpolished version of it all. The one who taught them that the angles of tables needed to be protected, and that feeding a five-year-old five slices of cake right before bed wasn’t actually great. Still, they learnt. Andromeda was kind enough to let them learn. And - Teddy survived. In their first apartment, Harry remembers the way he spent days decorating his whole bedroom with Spiderman posters. Yet, he is a single line in Rita Skeeter’s book. It’s a good thing - that.

For Harry, Teddy doesn’t have the same kinds of questions that James and Albus have. Harry is his godfather, not his father. He isn’t the one who first has to explain the war to him, or the death of his parents. It is Andromeda’s burden to bear, and Harry is grateful to her for it. Teddy is a Tonks and a Black in the war, the loss of a daughter taken by a sister; he is also taught from a very young age that the world isn’t split between good people and Death Eaters. The concept of heritage is complicated. Teddy knows his cousin Draco - he and his wife and his child are at the house often - and he knows of his Aunt Narcissa. But, since that day (with Harry, after the war), Andromeda never again let her inside the house again.  

So: the questions Teddy has for Harry, they are often about the other side. Things like: ‘They were friends in Hogwarts, right? Your dad and mine?’ And: ‘What was he like?’ It’s lucky. Harry has a whole year’s worth of anecdotes from Lupin’s classes, the way they got caught on the train talking about him like he wasn’t there, and the way Lupin taught him to cast Patronuses and to fight Bogarts and above all, how he always smiled through it all. It’s even more lucky that Ginny has an entire summer spent at Grimmauld watching Lupin and Sirius joke around to tell Teddy about, playing with the kids they were instead of getting rid of pixies. When Teddy is older, she can explain how much his father helped her, after her first year, and how he was the one who insisted she keep writing. 

This doesn’t mean that Harry lies to him. Lupin had - flaws. ‘I think he was scared,’ Harry admits. ‘Of falling in love with your mum. Of having you. He thought maybe the lycanthropy would pass down on to you. He didn’t want to be a burden on your mum, on anybody.’

‘That’s why he left?’

‘Yeah.’ There is a beat. It is not sugarcoating to insist on the truth. ‘He came back, though,’ Harry reminds him. ‘He came back.’ There is a smile. ‘I saw him the day you were born.’ At the memory, he almost laughs. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. He was so happy. He wanted you so badly.’ 

As Teddy grows older, he learns to play music. It isn’t his chosen occupation, but it definitely is a passion. He is four years old when Andromeda first has him take piano lessons  because it is What The Blacks Do, but Teddy actually enjoys it. He is drawn, from so young, by the sound that the keys make when he presses them, quick to learn to match the notes he hears in the wild to those that correspond. 

Then, at six years old, there is the violin. He begs Harry to take him to classes in London while he stays with them during the school holidays. Is then woefully disappointed when he finds that you don’t actually hold a fiddle like a guitar. The guitar is cooler, he claims. But: it is an Introduction to Music session for kids his age, all chaotically running around the basement of an Arts centre in Islington with very limited attention spans, exploring string instruments. ‘I want the big one,’ Teddy says. Harry laughs. 

‘The guitar, yeah? You’ve said that already. You can have it when that other boy’s fini-’

‘No,’ Teddy insists. ‘The very big one.’ 

Oh. The double bass, then. He runs towards it. It’s about three times his size. Merlin. ‘Alright, then,’ Harry laughs. 

By the time he reaches his teenage years, Teddy is pretty comfortable in his skills. He is fifteen and there is: the piano, the violin (just a few years, because his grandmother really liked the idea), a little bit of drums, a little bit of uke and - bizarrely - the flute. He is the one who gets James interested in music as well. And, of course, there is a guitar, too (or, in fact, several) softly jammed on as background noise while they all hang out in his grandmother’s back garden, once. Andromeda is laughing with Ginny, sat at the table outside, enjoying cups of tea. James, Al and Lily are playing chase. 

Teddy doesn’t seem to know what to play. There is a bit of fiddling around with the chorus of a Weird Sisters song Harry vaguely recognises, then a bit of the melody of that song that was all over the Muggle radio last summer. Now, you didn’t have to stoop so low. Have your friends collect your records and then change your number. I don’t even need - Ginny absentmindedly hums. Andromeda tells a story. Teddy chuckles, looking at his godfather. ‘How about that?’ he raises an eyebrow.

He starts playing again and Harry huffs out a laugh. Ginny and Andromeda as well. It’s mildly embarrassing. ‘Oh Merlin, don’t get him started,’ Ginny groans. The riff continues and Teddy teases Harry again. ‘Come on, I know you know the words -’

‘No…’ Harry feels heat in his cheeks. 

‘Are you joking me?’ Ginny laughs at him. She turns to Andromeda. ‘You should hear him when he thinks he’s alone, cooking in the kitchen.’ Teddy’s grandmother lets out a chuckle.

‘Go on,’ Teddy dares him again, grinning. Harry rolls his eyes. His godson’s still looping on the guitar. ‘Palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there’s vomit on his sweater, already - mom’s spaghetti - Come on!’ Teddy laughs. Harry grumbles a little. ‘That song’s, like, my entire childhood.’

Harry almost chokes. God, what a terrible influence his twenty-year-old self was on that child.

Still, after the embarrassment and after the laughter from three of them relentlessly teasing his music taste passes, and after Harry does do the first verse (pretty badly) so that they will finally Leave It Alone, Teddy continues to vaguely pull at strings when he asks: ‘Did Dad play anything, though? Grandma said Mum was way too clumsy.’ 

And, Harry freezes. It’s the question he’s always dreaded, with Teddy. The one he knows he has - perpetually has - about his own parents. The one like: what was his mum’s favourite brand of tea and what happened to their cat? 

‘I don’t know,’ he admits.

There is a flash in his godson’s eyes. Harry knows it all too well. It is gone in an instant. ‘Oh that’s alright.’

‘No,’ Harry shakes his head. ‘It’s not. I’m sorry.’

The hardest thing about Teddy’s questions is that Harry can’t always answer them all.

Lily - just like James is always the first, she is always the last. A kinship with Ginny, immediately, the knowledge of what it’s like to never want to feel left out. As a little girl, their daughter is: fiery and brave and fearless and eager, there is a franticness to her, a will to live and do and accomplish everything all the time louder than everyone. Lily likes Quidditch and make-up and dollhouses and tennis and she has her father wrapped around her finger, the mischievous smile and her mother’s brown eyes that say: ‘Dad, can I?’ Can I run in the mud, can I get ice cream, can I get on your broom, can I have a pink cauldron? Please. Always, please. Harry is awful at saying ‘no’ to her, he knows. 

On cue, on the 1st of November 2024, Lily Luna Potter is the last of all their children to finally turn seventeen. She is ecstatic; Harry and Ginny are horrified - they are so old, now, and where did all that time go? It was only yesterday that they took James and Al to the World Cup and got married in the middle of Bumfuck, Nevada. Now, they have adult children? What? 

That day, Lily is home. She actually appears on Harry’s doorstep a couple days before, the evening of the 30th. By some bizarre twist of fate, he is home all alone. ‘My poor darling father,’ she ironically says. Ginny is covering a game in France for the Prophet, will be back tomorrow around noon. Albus is in Cambridge. James is at his mate’s place in Wales, planning ‘the Hallowe’en party of the century.’ From what Harry’s heard, it will be a proper ‘Thing.’ They’ve got authorisations to make an awful lot of noise from the Ministry, and about six hundred people on the guest list alone. Tickets are selling at £100/ʛ40 and up on Instagram. James has been working with his Uncles for weeks to organise the décor and the music and the tricks and fireworks and if it works, George’s told him he might be willing to let him open a WWW event-planning side business. Ginny did almost ask: ‘Isn’t this in bad taste?’ but Harry smiled and shook his head. ‘It’s fine,’ he whispered. ‘I think I actually like that he’s not thinking about it.’

She nodded. ‘’Kay.’

Still: Harry’s first thought, seeing his daughter standing at his front door, is that she should probably be in school. It’s a Wednesday. Nevertheless, Lily has a weekend bag slung over her shoulder, and is standing out on the front porch in the rain. ‘I’m almost seventeen,’ she moans. ‘And, I took a bus to Inverness then the train, it took me all day. I didn’t do magic, I promise.’ Harry gives her a bit of an exasperated look, trying to hide the fact that he is, in fact, very happy to see her. And, laughing a little. He has - two more days left of active parenting, you know? 

Ultimately, he does open the door to let her in. Quickly owls some sort of excuse to McGonagall; it will most likely not fool anyone, but will at least prevent her from calling the Aurors and start a search party. Lily casually hacks into his phone on the coffee table (like: figures out his password after two tries) and promptly plops herself onto the sofa, opening the Deliveroo app. ‘How does curry sound to you?’ she asks.

He bursts out a laugh. 

It’s nice, though. Having the kids home, these days, he won’t lie. They’re all grown up now, and he and Ginny laid down the rules and limits of what was or wasn’t acceptable so long ago that everything else is just a bonus. Enjoying their company and having a laugh without having to always run around: ‘No, you can’t have all that cake before dinner,’ and ‘Don’t pull your sister’s hair.’ ‘You do not talk to your mother like that, okay?’ Now, if Lily eats cake before dinner, that’s kind of her problem, not his, and if James pulls her hair - well, that’s his. James has come to learn the hard way that bat-bogey hexes are a skill passed down through matriarchal lines. 

‘Naran’s not with you?’ Harry observes, later that evening. Lily shakes her head, shovelling a piece of garlic nan down her throat. Her hair is long, the way her mother used to have hers at that age, a mess of loose strands interweaving over her shoulders. 

‘Yeah, no, she’s meeting me at the -’ Lily trails off, looks at him. ‘She’s definitely not meeting me at James’s party tomorrow for my birthday. We’re definitely not doing celebrations at midnight. She is staying in school and studying Charms in the library.’ Harry laughs. Naran’s turning seventeen in December. Just a tiny bit longer. In theory. In practice, they are best friends, ride-or-dies, conjoined at the hip since the age of twelve. Like he, Ron and Hermione, really. There are ways to sneak out of Hogwarts to go to cool parties, it seems.

‘Oh-kay,’ he jokingly says.

That night, he and Lily eat and watch a film. The kind of quiet evening with his children that Harry’s learnt to relish. His daughter likes: Love Actually and Fight Club and The Dark Knight and Everything Everywhere All At Once. ‘Also that depressing film with Whatshisname again? Paul Mescal?’ 

The day she said that, Albus laughed. ‘Which one?’

The next morning, Harry goes out for a run. He’s taken the day off. His trainers beat the pavement as the sun rises over London, the sky grey and drizzly and overcast. When he gets back, Lily is up and talking on the phone. He opens the door softly, not wanting to wake her, but the low tone of her voice escapes from the back of the house. Their open-plan kitchen that leads onto floor-to-ceiling windows and the back garden. She is whispering. He can’t understand what she’s saying. He gets closer; her back is to him, watching the rain, and he finally realises that distance and the quietness of her tone aren’t the reasons he isn’t understanding this. He sets his keys and Bluetooth earphones loose onto the island, they sing a jiggle against the marble. Lily immediately switches to English. ‘Hey,’ she says, smiling as she turns around. The phone is still glued to her ear. ‘My dad’s just come in, I’ll call you back.’ She hangs up. A mug of tea in her other hand. ‘Morning,’ she says to him. 

Gives her father a hug in spite of the sweat from his run. Then, inelegantly groans: ‘Ugh, gross.’ Makes him a couple more pieces of toast. Reheats water for tea. They eat and drink in relative silence. A bit of chatter, carried by Lily. ‘Where did you run to?’ and ‘Yeah, it’s getting colder in Scotland as well.’ Lily likes to talk, like her mother, and she hates the cold and the dark, like he does. 

It is just past eight when they finish up, that day. The sun never quite managed to break through the thickness of the clouds; it’ll be one of those autumn ones. Lily looks at him. ‘Are you going?’

Harry nods. He’s never made a secret of it with the kids. In a lot of cultures, her birthday is also the day of the dead, but to him, her being born the day after has always meant hope. ‘Yeah, I’ll grab a shower first, though.’

‘Yeah, you stink,’ she quips. He snorts a bit. She is quiet. Like him. ‘Can I come with you?’

He stills, taken aback - a bit. Not that he would ever say no, it’s just that none of his kids ever asked. And: he must admit he never offered. A bit like Grimmauld the weekend after the incident at the consulate, or like Hogwarts on the 3rd of May, he’s always thought graveyards weren’t a place for children. Ginny is the one who still comes, sometimes, some years. He reckons she goes on her own, too. There’s often fresh flowers on their grave when he gets there. 

Harry nods. ‘’Course.’

He Apparates them. Lands in a spot known to wizards alone, a little further out from the main square of the village. Godric’s Hollow is the same as always. They walk around; the rain sees people ushering up and down the streets, holding umbrellas tight against the wind. The two of them go unnoticed. He is rarely noticed here, anyway. There are a few pubs they pass by, a Tesco; Harry shows Lily the old, independent record shop where he bought his first ever CDs. It was his first visit after the war. Now, they sell vinyls and vintage posters and band Ts. ‘Oh, they’ve got Loyle Carner,’ she says. Her fingers graze the covers one by one; they stay a long time. ‘Ren, Dave.’ Lily smiles. ‘They’ve got good taste.’ 

It’s one of the tiny ways Harry has managed to influence their daughter, perhaps. The others always mock him for his love of Muggle rap, but just like when it comes to films, Lily has more eclectic tastes. With her mum and Naran and her other friends at school, she likes: Olivia Rodrigo and Lorde, and Taylor Swift. Queued online for hours and managed to get tickets - all excited - to the Wembley London dates. But, with her father, she has also grown to like: The Streets and 2000s Brit-hop and a little bit of Eminem. (Though, he is an arsehole, of course.) She keeps Harry young, too. Introduces him to the new stuff her generation produces. They have this game, now, the two of them. One-upping each other on a shared playlist he puts on while he runs, and Spotify links exchanged on Whatsapp in the dead of night. 

That day, they walk towards the house. Lily is curious. ‘You don’t remember the inside at all, do you?’ she asks, and: ‘You’ve never gone in?’ Harry shakes his head. There is ivy growing up the walls, now, slowly overtaking, lifting tiles off the roof. Part of the back wall has fallen off a bit, Harry’s been told. This time of year, the leaves are a gorgeous blend of oranges and reds against the crumbling, greying whitewash. Lily inspects, from behind the gate.

‘I don’t think it’s safe to go in,’ Harry adds. ‘The structure’s probably not sound.’ 

Her mouth twists. ‘Right.’ Harry wonders if time and the ivy and the rain and the small movements in the ground will collapse it, one day. The way nothing on Earth is ever permanent, and yet everything somehow is. 

They lay flowers, at the graveyard. The heavy rain is now a drizzle through the almost-naked branches of trees. Lily is cold (Lily is always cold), and she is wearing one of his old coats, the Canada Goose one with the fur lining around the hood. It hugs the sides of her neck and falls down her back. Too large for her in a way that she claims is ‘perfect,’ going halfway down her thighs. Her long, thin legs are clad in fleece leggings and thick boots. It’s true: the air is freezing, today. It was two degrees when he checked his phone before going out this morning.

Lily watches the headstone for a while. She seems to read it a bunch of times. He wonders if it’s weird - for the first time ever - his daughter’s name on a headstone. He never thought of it like that, though. 

She asks: ‘Do you talk to them?’

He shakes his head. ‘No.’ There is a pause. ‘You can, though. Your mother does.’  

Lily nods. 

She sinks to her knees for a moment. Doesn’t speak, just rearranges the flowers they’ve left a bit better - nicer. When she rises again, it leaves round, wet circles on her leggings. ‘I never know what to say,’ she tells him, then. ‘When Naran talks about her mum, about her family over there, I -’ Lily shakes her head. ‘I never know what to say.’ 

It’s okay. She is looking at him. ‘I don’t think anyone does,’ Harry admits. She nods. Her mouth twists again; Lily gazes back at the grave. ‘Your Uncle Ron and Hermione, they -’ he shrugs. ‘They tried. But they - I don’t know,’ he adds. ‘Maybe, there’s nothing to say. I never knew what to say to Hannah,’ he adds, then. Lily’s mouth is just slightly open; Harry can see the smallest hint of her front teeth from the side. Her lips have a rosy tint to them, left by lip balm. ‘I think with Ron and Hermione, what helped is that they were - there,’ Harry explains. What mattered was that he wasn’t alone.

Again, Lily nods. 

She isn’t looking at him anymore. ‘Naran’s going to go back,’ she tells him. Harry closes his eyes. A second. She shakes her head. ‘Not now, I mean, I don’t know when,’ Lily admits. ‘I keep -’ she sighs. ‘I keep trying to show her life’s worth living here, telling her she’s safe, telling her she needs to finish school. I sound like Grandma.’ Lily scoffs, rolling her eyes. ‘I don’t think her family even want her to come back. But she’s not listening to me anymore.’ She bites her lip. Her voice breaks. He remembers her: crying in his arms, just months before. Crying, impossibly wanting her friend to be okay. ‘She always used to listen to me. From the very beginning, I was the one she listened to.’ The two of them, trying to chat through the language gaps at Grimmauld. Now, it feels like so long ago. 

That morning, he watches as Lily’s fingers reach under her big, oversized glasses - another gift inherited from his shoddy DNA. They are brown and tortoiseshell, always much more on trend than his ever were. He and Lily have this other competition going, every time they go into the optician’s now, of who will wind up with the worse prescription. Lily wipes tears from under her eyes. 

‘She says that if she doesn’t go back soon, doesn’t try, there won’t be anything left for her to go back to,’ she cries. 

He wraps his arm around her. ‘Hey, come here,’ he tells her. 

Lily cries on his shoulder for a while, that morning. His baby girl. She is seventeen, almost, and the issue with kids growing up is that a hug and a kiss often no longer solves anything. His big Daddy arms are only as strong as the world allows them to be. He wishes he could just take it, all of it, all of her pain, and Scourgify it away. Even when she stops crying, she still feels inconsolable. That look in her gaze like she’s watching someone she loves slowly suffocate. She is being asked to tie the bag tighter. 

Lily shakes her head, steps back like tearing herself away. She looks at her grandparents’ grave again. Harry waits. That morning, Lily’s question is: ‘What was the hardest thing?’ 

This time, the answer comes easy: ‘Having you.’ 

Her and her brothers, Harry thinks. Not the act of having them itself - forget about winning the war or killing the Darkest wizard of all time, that has been the biggest joy and accomplishment of his life - but: getting to a place where they could have them. Where they believed in the future and in themselves enough, trusted enough, to think they could give three children the lives they never had. ‘You know that quote?’ he asks. ‘“I’m tryin’ to build castles out of sand, baby girl”?’ Lily smiles, still a bit teary, and nods. ‘That’s how it felt,’ he explains. Like trying to rebuild their lives and the world at the same time, against a perpetual tide, and never giving up. Feeling like you are trapped on the throne sometimes, with no way out. And then, the hardest thing became this: answering his children’s questions and watching them cry and knowing that there are things that he cannot change. Knowing that for the beautiful moments to exist, Ginny was right: they will also have to learn to be sad. He will have to let them be sad. Let them go. That they will not ask anymore. They will just tell. 

‘Dad. I’m scared,’ Lily says. 

He nods. ‘I know, baby. I know.’

The next day, on Lily’s gorgeous, hopeful, birthday - the one that will always follow the Hallowe’en graveyard for him - Harry and Ginny give her a watch. A watch and a bracelet, and they shower her with kisses. James’s party is at 7 and she will go straight back to Hogwarts afterwards so while everyone is busy getting dressed and fancy and ready, Harry goes into the safe in the attic. He wraps up the Cloak all of his children have always wanted for themselves in tissue paper, with a ribbon on top. Writes a card that says: From Dad. He shoves the package at the bottom of her duffle bag. At the threshold, she kisses him goodbye. Harry feels like he is standing at the edge of a treacherous river, and begging on a bridge. 

Naran’s seventeenth is a little over a month later, on the 9th of December. They mail her a watch, too. On the 14th, one of her brothers dies in an explosion on the frontlines in Chifeng. The morning of the 16th, McGonagall shows up on their doorstep. Ginny just - screams, then.

There are snapshots. Sounds. Hindsight is a gift to the narrative again. Ginny’s howls. Suddenly: every fucking person Harry knows at the Auror office, every fucking person he knows in London Mongolian circles, roped in to find the two of them. Lily’s clever, he’ll give her that. Used her birthday money to book them both on five different Portkeys and ten Ryanair flights. She’s learnt from the best. A text that comes in on her brother’s phone about a week later. We’re okay. Tell Dad to stop looking. It’s putting us at risk. He’s gonna get us killed. Harry’s magic that breaks the phone in his hand. 

There is the day he decides that: ‘Fuck this, I’m going.’ It’s an easy decision to make. A bunch of clothes hastily thrown inside a backpack under the blaring lights of his and Ginny’s bedroom. His wand. A restricted knife he illegally kept from his old job. Warm layers - fuck, she took that jacket. Ginny screaming at him. James screaming at him. ‘I’m going, too,’ his son says.  

James pushes past Harry to get to the door. Harry grabs his shoulders and rough handles him out of the way. Another worst of the worst mistake that barely registers, this time around. James’s head hits the wall with a dull thud; a family photo falls off and cuts the side of his eyebrow. There is blood pouring down his son’s face. Albus’s spell separates them. James is glaring at his father again, standing between him and the door. ‘You don’t scare me,’ he spits out. ‘She’s my sister. I’m going.’ Ginny’s spell, this time, an avalanche of ice cold water on the both of them. Harry flies ten feet back with the impact. ‘NEITHER OF YOU ARE FUCKING GOING!’ she yells. ‘YOU THINK I DON’T WANT TO GO TOO?! I GAVE BIRTH TO HER!’ Her voice breaks with cries that constrict her throat but don’t come out. ‘BUT WHAT IS THIS? ARE WE ALL GOING NOW?’

She looks at Harry, sprawled on the floor. Ginny breaks down, suddenly, floods and floods of tears down her cheeks. ‘I HATE YOU!’ she yells again. ‘I HATE YOU. I CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU, I CAN’T -’

He scrambles up to his feet, runs to catch her before she falls to the ground. ‘I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE -’ she says and crumbles, her fists hitting his chest until she is on her knees. He falls with her, his arms wrapped around her. 

There is: the two of them around the kitchen island, later. Harry isn’t sure how many days it’s been. The news is about to hit the press, Samira said. ‘I’m so sorry, I tried, I -’ They realised they hadn’t told anyone. There hasn’t been enough time. It is three o’clock in the morning, now. Ginny presses a pen to a blank sheet of paper between them. ‘We agree now. We keep each other sane,’ she says. There is this lump in his throat. He wants to cry. He wants to scream. He wants to die. It is like someone else has taken his lungs and yanked them out. Raw, no anaesthetic. ‘We keep the boys here. That’s the priority. They’re fighters, we raised them to be. You’ve seen James - he’s like a lion in a cage. They want to go; they’re not going,’ she tells him. ‘ We want to go. We could go. We don’t go. If we go, they go, and neither of us will survive it. That’s non-negotiable. We keep each other hostage if we have to.’ 

‘Gin -’

She shakes her head. ‘No. You don’t get to blame yourself.’ It is so much; how can she demand that of him? ‘We both knew.’ Leaning against the marble, he looks up at her. ‘We didn’t tell each other, but we both knew. Since the day Naran stepped inside this house. That’s why you didn’t want her here. You knew. You saw it in her. I did, too.’ Harry shuts his eyes for a moment, can’t look anymore. He told her. How to be in Gryffindor, how to be friends with Lily - God. ‘I asked Lily point blank, last summer, you know?’ Ginny confesses to him, then. ‘I said: “If Naran goes, will you go as well?” She lied to me. I knew she was lying to me. So, we both let her go. And, that’s a thing we have to live with, now. Because we both knew it had to be her choice. It was the right thing to do.’ 

Harry is going to throw up, he thinks. In fact, he does. Quickly turns around and heaves above the sink. Ginny runs the tap and hands him the paper towels. Unfazed. ‘Four years ago, the risk was this: letting a twelve year old kid out on her own without her one friend because we were scared this might happen someday. We took that risk,’ she says. ‘Now, look at me.’ He does. Can still taste the sick at the back of his mouth. ‘If Naran had gone off and Lily had stayed here, how would you feel about the person we brought her up to be?’ Ginny pauses. He looks away. He can’t, just can’t - ‘I am terrified, Harry,’ Ginny adds. ‘I’ve never been this scared in my life. And, that includes everything. But, I am so proud of my baby.’ 

He is sick again. Can’t breathe. Afterwards, finally, his eyes close. He catches his breath. ‘I gave her the Cloak.’

Ginny crosses his gaze. ‘Good,’ she says. 

He doesn’t know if he really believes in it. The Tale. Maybe, that’s the little bit of religion he has. A belief that it’ll hide her from Death. It’s a Hail Mary. ‘This is a battle plan,’ Ginny says. ‘We agree to it and we don’t ever deviate. Until she comes home.’ Harry opens his mouth. Ginny shakes her head. ‘She’s half of me, and half of you. She’ll make it. I know. Anything else is inconceivable. Okay?’

He looks away, for a second. The anger courses through his veins. At himself. At the world. He lets it flow, lets it slow. 

‘Okay.’ 

He doesn’t know how she does it. Ginny never cries or screams ever again. 

Wars are a cycle, they say. 

In 2024 - afterwards - life becomes a blur of: news headlines and well-wishers and empty reassurances. The papers write, and write, and the wireless talks. His therapist once mentions patterns and intergenerational trauma and he gets up and walks away and never goes again. Just can’t. Can’t look Hermione in the eye either. She asked, last summer. She knew as well. Can’t look at Ron. They don’t know what to say. Harry’s thoughts go to unforgivable, unimaginable places. Why not Rose? Why not Victoire? Why not anyone else? He can’t look at Ginny’s parents, either. They know too well there is nothing to say. Andromeda makes tea for the two of them. 

In those days, the war becomes: his job. C.A.S.H.C.O.W. Hermione leaves him alone, never brings up the DMLE again. He couldn’t, anyway. Politics have ceased to exist. Everything else has ceased to exist. The very thought of Philomena Nott makes him implode. There are vague noises in his head, anti-racist movements and demonstrations that get large turnouts, but he can’t bear the thought of having to speak, of cameras in his face. They love the story. The story of a family who fights, the story of a girl who, unlike all of the others from humanitarian organisations to foreign fighters, didn’t go there for the glory, or out of a white saviour type of desire, but to help a friend. The press interviews some of their classmates in Hogwarts, eager to talk for the publicity of their names printed in newspapers. They easily conclude Lily and Naran are a couple. The Potter girl went there for love - how tragically beautiful. Upholding her parents’ legacy. In their articles and talk shows, Lily is a fantasy who isn’t a daughter anymore. 

Sometimes, in those days, even holding a conversation with one of Ginny’s brothers at The Burrow sucks out all of Harry’s energy. He wonders if the therapist is right. If the press is right. If Lily took after him. If it’s his fault. He wonders what he would have done, at seventeen, if he’d been Naran’s friend. He looks at Ron. Kingsley said not to live in hypotheticals and Harry supposes that was never the decision he, himself, had to make. 

There is the tiniest sense of usefulness, working on the Mongolia stuff with C.A.S.H.C.O.W. They are still receiving refugees who seem to come in waves following the inevitable ups and downs of the rebellion’s movements. The organisation funds emergency accommodation and provides bare necessities to those who need them. When it comes to wider policy decisions, Hermione is everywhere. Ron doesn’t ever mention it - he wouldn’t - but even Harry sometimes worries, wondering if she is going to burn out, kill herself in the process. On top of national issues, she is in constant summits and meetings trying to foster an agreement on the border, opening a dialogue between the rebels and the Chinese government, speaking out at the International Confederation of Wizards. She negotiates three ceasefires that last a few months each, in limited areas where civilians are most at risk. Organises the safe passage of humanitarian aid and convoys, emergency medical assistance. 

The magical governments of Argentina, Spain and Namibia are their biggest allies in this. They have taken the most Mongolian refugees, after the UK. Germany, France and MACUSA are still a bit lukewarm, policies changing with the whims of every election. There are also very large camps in the neighbouring countries of Kazakhstan and Russia; Harry’s been told by people who have managed to escape that these are breeding grounds for misery and human trafficking, constantly the target of local Auror assaults, trying to dislodge them before the Muggle population learns of their presence.  

Having Labour in Downing Street is somewhat helpful. They are at least willing to hear Hermione out, serve as a bridge between the part of the international wizarding community she represents, and the Muggle Chinese government. The Chinese’s current position is to demand the complete and utter surrender of the rebels, who ought to agree to be tried and executed for treason and terrorism. Harry gets it. A little bit like Kingsley’s Order, the rebellion has taken a very eye-for-an-eye approach; it’s costing the lives of countless Chinese wizards and soldiers on the ground. A few attacks on wizarding landmarks in Beijing and Shanghai have also been reported by the press, killing a number of Chinese wizarding civilians. On the wireless, reporters and commentators like to analyse the conflict from the comfort of their studios. ‘A solution will never be found if the Mongolians continue to indulge in this level of violence,’ Harry hears. ‘Yes, this is Mongolian land, but the Chinese have been in this area for generations, now. They need to be allowed to stay there, and stay there safely. These are not peaceful protesters. These are terrorists.’

Scrimgeour used to call Kingsley a terrorist. Maybe, he was. Harry wonders what people are supposed to do when violence is the only thing the other side is willing to listen to. 

In the UK, the Chinese community organises demonstrations in Diagon Alley accusing Hermione’s government of bias. They claim C.A.S.H.C.O.W. is now supporting terrorism. If the Minister was as intent on fairly resolving this conflict as she says she is, she would dissolve the organisation. Harry, Neville and Hannah are forced to sit down and discuss whether they should shut down, or at least separate the Mongolian assistance branch from the rest, to at least try and preserve the women’s stuff and the funding they provide to British, disadvantaged communities from the bad press. 

‘I can’t take Mongolia,’ Harry suddenly says. It is mid-2025, by then, and he surprises himself as the words come out of his mouth. But: C.A.S.H.C.O.W. is no longer a saving grace, he’s lately realised, it is an obsession; there is this map in his office that highlights every bombing, every raid, every assassination, every frontline death. Hannah understands. 

‘Okay, then we split up. You and Nev take C.A.S.H.C.O.W. and I take the Mongolia stuff. I’ll find a name for it, incorporate. I’ll have to quit my job in Hogwarts, it’s too much work.’

‘Han -’ Neville tries. Harry knows why. With everything going on, she is again painting a target on her back. They already had to evacuate C.A.S.H.C.O.W. twice in the last six months due to bomb threats. She shakes her head. 

‘No, I want to do this,’ she says. ‘Fuck them.’

‘Do you think I’m abandoning her?’ he asks Ginny, then. 

She runs her fingers through his hair again. ‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re no use to her driving yourself insane.’

In October 2025, it’s almost been a year and Hermione has a deal proposal to bring to the table. She’s understood the main thing: the Muggle Chinese government doesn’t want its international borders to move an inch. They care about Muggle perception more than anything else. So, she offers this: Muggle China stays Muggle China, with an overlapping, self-governing wizarding community in Inner Mongolia. The first of its kind, it’ll be monitored and overseen by the International Confederation of Wizards for the next hundred years, with a slow and gradual devolution of powers to local institutions in the area. Quotas will allow for the representation of both sides in government, and complete amnesty will be granted to all those involved. Chinese wizards in the area will be allowed to remain in their homes and to participate in the formation of the new state. After a hundred years, a referendum will occur to decide the future status of the region. 

It is an aggressive proposal. Her staff know it. It’s a starting point for negotiations. ‘The issue is land,’ she admits to them. ‘The rebels want separate and safe wizarding land to settle on, that China will not be able to get to. But, to the Chinese government, that means giving up on the border issue. And, they don’t want to displace their Muggle population. Which would mean giving the rebels land that’s currently unoccupied, but who wants random land in the Gobi desert? That’s not interesting to them.’ Hermione pauses around the table at The Burrow, drinking a sip of water. ‘The Chinese are worried about their borders, because they’re worried about Muggle contagion. All the issues they’ve had in Tibet and with the Uyghurs in recent years. They’re scared the Muggles in these places will seize the opportunity if they give wizards in Mongolia what they want.’

Still, to Harry, the deal doesn’t sound like a worse idea than the current tally of 30,000 deaths that have been reported. Again, it’s a starting point. 

He and Ginny come to meet a lot of people during that time. Even after Harry leaves the Mongolian side of C.A.S.H.C.O.W. to Hannah, lists of the dead are passed around refugee circles he is now familiar with. Scouring physical descriptions and names is a rather morbid way to get news and updates. Harry likes talking to them. He feels like these are the only people in England who truly understand. A handful of other families they befriend in hardship, who fry Huushuurs at the weekends and invite him, Ginny and the boys for dinner in their flimsy emergency accommodations. They are so very generous, even with the little they have. The kids teach them to play Shagai and somehow, they become the only people Harry still feels he can laugh with. 

One summer night, in his and Ginny’s back garden, a man named Amgalan offers him a cigarette. He’s got that look of someone in his sixties, hardened by life. A messy spatter of salt and pepper hair on his head, and a few of his teeth are missing. Harry shakes his head. ‘No, I - I don’t,’ he says. 

Amgalan shrugs. The smell of burning tobacco takes over the heat. ‘My daughter, she - she made me stop,’ Harry tells him.

He likes talking about Lily. To strangers at the shops, to people he meets in work. ‘My daughter really likes these biscuits,’ and, ‘We got that same lamp for my daughter’s bedroom.’ ‘My daughter will have my head if I start smoking again.’ He is hanging onto that bloody app for dear life, now, has these visions of Lily coming back and going straight for his phone, like she used to when she came home from school. It counts the days since his last cigarette. Since she left. 

Harry doesn’t keep track of the number of times he almost packs his bags and goes. The number of times Ginny also almost does. The times they have to physically restrain Albus and James not to go. 

War (life) becomes: a blur of letters and texts. First, the last ones they exchanged. Harry stares. The 15th of December 2024, at 8:52 AM. They’d just found out Naran’s brother had passed away. Harry tried - there is a Whatsapp missed call. 8:54 AM, a message from Lily.

sorry, about to go into class. we’re alright. i’ll call you back tomorrow. 

He remembers nodding, breathing out a sigh of relief as he read it, back then. Telling himself he was being paranoid. That the alarm bells going off in his head and the sense of visceral dread at the pit of his stomach had been wrong. There was another buzz.

i love you. 

He replied. 

i love you too. 

There is: the letter Naran left for them. The letter Lily didn’t leave for them. The one thing McGonagall brought with her, that day. Mr and Mrs Potter, please forgive me, it said. I tried to leave in the middle of the night yesterday but she didn’t let me. 

Naran used to call, he knows. Her brothers and her father - back in the day. But: Lily never does call them. She texts, instead. Her brothers mostly, from random numbers that always belong to someone else. There are: pictures of fields and horses, and old Buddhist temples. Beautiful things. Descriptions of Mongolia as a place on Earth, as snow and wind and blue skies and funny sayings. there’s a joke, she tells James, that every mongolian family has a shaman, an alcoholic, and someone who’s into MLMs. maybe i will start selling essential oils when i get back, what do you reckon? Lily never writes about the war. 

She sends postcards to her mother. Through the Muggle post. They take weeks to arrive. They always say the same thing. Lots of love, Lils. With them, they have names of cities and places, follow her movements on a map. 

A year passes. Another one. Life is halted, yet inevitably continuing. They try to celebrate: birthdays and Christmases. Every Hallowe’en, he goes to Godric’s Hollow and silently begs his mother. It’s her eighteenth. Nineteenth, tomorrow. Harry can’t do Quidditch anymore, can’t see people anymore, but he tries to keep running. When the nightmares feel too real. They try to take holidays with the boys. Try to keep going. Ginny has a strength he doesn’t have. A determination in her look that doesn’t allow for failure - this is how she survives wars. She writes five books she never publishes. Says: ‘She’s all I can write about.’ Albus starts his second year of uni, then his third year, does remarkably well, considering. He graduates with a First in June of 2027. Decides to do his masters. Aims for a PhD. James kicks off his events business; it does well. He also gets cheated on, then dumped by his current girlfriend. The drama it causes. Harry knows James is an adult, twenty-two now, but still feels this quasi-irrepressible need to protect his baby from getting his heart broken. He and Ginny hug. Kiss, often. Try to remind themselves of their own presence. They fight for love, still.  

Lily never writes to him. 

In the spring of 2027, there is an incident. A break-in of rebels into the official residence of the wizarding Governor of Inner Mongolia. They kill him, his wife and his three children. On the other side, the retaliation is brutal. The Chinese come down on fifty rebel safe houses around the region and arrest two hundred and fifty-four people, total. It’s the largest crackdown they’ve managed in years. A message. 

They release the names and identities of those who were caught. There are five Americans, two French, one Spanish and three British nationals amongst the lot. It at least wakes up those governments. The international chaos grows; everyone now trying to pressure the Chinese into releasing their own citizens. A bunch of articles come out questioning the official version of events around the Governor’s death, saying it might have been an inside job - Harry’s honestly not sure. It sounds like something the rebellion would do. Still, the argument is that you can’t hold over two hundred people responsible for the actions of a small group, and -

The Chinese don’t give a fuck. If the rebels they arrested aren’t guilty of that, they are certainly guilty of something. They will press criminal charges against each of these individuals - unless rebellion leaders agree to complete surrender within forty-eight hours. If not, they will try and execute everyone. 

Hermione shows up on their doorstep in person. ‘Harry -’

‘I know.’

He saw her name on the list, too. 

Hermione’s in negotiations over the next two days. Harry doesn’t sleep. After forty-six hours, the rebels send their response. They break into one of the retention facilities. Twenty-two Chinese soldiers die in the assault. Thirty-seven hostages escape. The Chinese walk out of the negotiation table and kill everyone else. 

They release the videos online. It garners a lot of chatter, a lot of clicks amongst their supporters. Even in the UK, there is this morbid sort of curiosity that drives people to watch, and of course the extra appeal for a bunch of racist arseholes who just want Mongolians to disappear and die, either in here or in their own homeland. 

The videos are an hour each. They bring people out one by one. Faces not even covered in front of the cameras. Once again, it is a message. There is a man in the corner you never quite see. He casts Avada Kedavras one after the other. Unfazed. People in different stages of disarray, some visibly bleeding or convulsing, presumably from previous acts of torture. There is: that inevitable jet of green light after jet of green light filmed by HD cameras. They don’t even care anymore. The wizarding moderators at Youtube take the videos down on request of multiple governments who claim they are still ‘working on verifying the authenticity.’ Like there is any doubt about the authenticity. They end up on the dark web anyway. 

‘I can’t,’ Ginny says. 

‘I know. It’s okay.’

Harry watches every single one of them. He doesn’t speed it up; it takes hours, but he doesn’t want to miss a face. He watches twice. Some close their eyes. Some beg. There is sound, too. It’s all in Mongolian, but. Some just stare straight ahead. Some yell insults. Nothing changes the verdict. Guilty, guilty, guilty. 

He emerges at 3 PM. There is a look he and Ginny throw each other in the kitchen. 

‘She’s not on them,’ he says. ‘I didn’t see Naran either.’

Ginny exhales. 

Five days later, Al gets a text about traditional embroidery. 

And so it continues. 

Until she comes home. 

This was perhaps never a story about war. It’s a story about its aftermath. 

July 2027. There is a peace deal. A real one. Hermione’s played a massive part in brokering it. So has the outrage at the recent executions that finally swung the international community into action. Harry doesn’t have a mind for the details, yet. He’ll become more familiar with them in the coming weeks and months and years, when he finally manages to breathe and think. For now, there is just: elation, then confusion, then the boys trying to call and text and the Mongolian refugees they know passing on information - they catch a glimpse of Naran holding a white girl’s hand in one of the demonstrations celebrating the armistice on the main wizarding square in Hohhot. Lily is just out of the shot. Then, a couple days later, there is a text. She sends it to his phone. 

Lily comes home on a ferry that arrives in Dover on the 6th of August 2027. Harry has her entire itinerary on his phone. The Wizarding Republic of Inner Mongolia is now an independent state of its own. As far as Muggles go, the region remains under Chinese rule, but a compromise has been found: land in the Gobi desert will be allocated to wizards to rebuild their communities, which will now exist based on a model that resembles Hogwarts. To Muggles, these places will look like disused power plants. To wizards, they will be independent, thriving villages and towns. The Chinese agree to a complete devolution of power to local institutions, which will be democratically elected and representative of the population. In exchange, the Mongolians agree that the amnesty law will be limited to the territory of Inner Mongolia. Any wizard known to have fought for the Mongolian cause is forever banned from entering the rest of the Chinese territory, or will be arrested at the border.

Wizarding connections are still in absolute shambles. Lily takes two Muggle aeroplanes and three Portkeys to get home without entering mainland China. She is held at the border with Kazakhstan for over twelve hours before they finally let her through. Her name is apparently on some lists. A Muggle aeroplane crosses Kazakhstan to Aktau, then another Portkey over the Caspian sea into Georgia. The Black Sea is a minefield of Russian warships no one wants to fly over, so she Portkeys to Bucharest. From there, she avoids airports and wizarding transportation - some European governments with a rather more sympathetic view of the Chinese cause have pledged to extradite Mongolian fighters if they end up there. She doesn’t want to take the risk. There are buses and trains on a fake ID until finally, the ferry. 

The car park is hot sun and blaring heat, that summer. So large and the asphalt is slowly melting; they are going through another heatwave. He and Ginny in the car not knowing what to say to each other, or if they’re allowed to speak. Harry drives as far as he can until an outdoor area for short term parking with a view on the Passenger Terminal. In  the distance, they see the ferry park up its doors against the embankment. Cars are starting to slowly roll out of its belly as pedestrians are taken on a bus for passport control. Once people start coming out of the terminal, he and Ginny scan the faces. Lots of British holidayers coming home. A little boy chasing after his sister. An old couple arguing about what side to drive on. And, then, her. 

Ginny sees her first. She screams. Then, runs. 

That day, they fall into each other’s arms, his girls. The two of them racing amongst the cars and the crowd, and suddenly they are hugging, touching, crying, laughing at the same time. People are ogling, but neither of them care. Lily is wearing an I Heart NY t-shirt and a backpack. That’s oddly the first thing he notices. It looks big and worn over a pair of denim shorts that are loose around her hips. She’s lost so much weight, he thinks. Still, she looks alive, tangible, there, and almost unreal. Her hair is cut short - like super short, shorter than his - and as Ginny touches her face, her cheeks, Harry hears his wife chuckling. ‘It suits you, it really does -’ she beams. Lily smiles, crying. 

‘Really?’

Harry doesn’t move. He is rooted in place. Sat against the burning metal of the hood of their car. His legs are about to give out. Until he finally crosses Lily’s gaze. ‘Dad?’ she says. 

Then, he breathes. She races towards him. ‘Come here.’

Molly cooks a feast. 

Life becomes very full again, very quickly, that summer. There are also snapshots. Bringing Lily home for the first time. The boys, anxiously biting their nails, waiting for the three of them in the sitting room, waiting for the car in the drive, finally falling into her arms. Bizarrely: presents. A mountain of stuff Lily’s brought back in that magically-extended backpack of hers. Games. Traditional hats she got all of them as a joke, cashmere sweaters and scarves, brightly coloured traditional gowns. Albus heats water up for tea and Ginny pulls out a box of biscuits and makes a bunch of sandwiches; Lily shovels half of them down her throat. The boys are watching her, Harry notices, surveilling every move and the way she comments on some of the art he and Ginny have changed in the house, the way she interacts with her surroundings. 

Lily remembers where to follow them into the kitchen, but not where the glasses are. ‘Oh, let me get that for you,’ Ginny says, to which Lily laughs. ‘Wow, no more “if you want something, you can get up and get it yourself”? You must really have missed me!’ she grins. She is loud, boisterous, and alive, their girl, even more so than she used to be. She challenges James to wear the hat: ‘Come on, you haven’t seen me in over two years, do it for me!’ 

He reluctantly puts it on. She takes a photo with his phone and immediately shares it on his socials. ‘Oops!’ James grits his teeth. He is getting irritated, Harry notices, and Lily rolls her eyes. ‘Come on, it’s a joke! Why are you acting like I’m dead?’

‘Do you want to sleep a bit?’ Harry asks. His voice is a low wave on eggshells. ‘We can go to your grandparents’ tomorrow,’ he offers. ‘They’ll be fine with that too.’

Lily shakes her head, smiles. ‘No, it’s fine. I want to see them. I slept on the ferry anyway.’ 

There are so many people, at the Weasleys’. Everyone wants to see Lily. She has a little thing in her backpack for each of them. To Harry, being surrounded by crowds like these, compared to the isolation and the loneliness of the past two years - it’s overwhelming. Lily’s in her element though, like a butterfly fluttering around, relishing in people’s love and attention like she’s feeding on flowers, like taking a duck to water. She giggles and jokes around with her cousins and her uncles and her aunts and her grandparents. Andromeda and Teddy are there, too. They all want news about Naran. ‘Yeah, she’s good,’ Lily nods, mid-bite, beaming. ‘She’s, er, staying with Erden - one of her brothers - for the next few weeks at least. She wants to come back here when things have calmed down. Say “hi” to everyone.’ There is a chorus of: ‘Well, say “hi” to her from us’ and ‘We’d love to have her back! Whenever she wants!’

Teddy and Victoire come back with them for dinner; Scorpius also joins them. It’s a bit quieter, but still: over half a dozen people around the table. There is curry and: ‘God, I’ve missed this,’ Lily says, munching on a piece of nan again. Scorpius and Al leave around half past ten, as do Teddy and Vic, and Harry helps Lily carry her stuff up to her bedroom. Something to do while James and Ginny clean up the kitchen. There is this weird tension in his shoulders and his bones, like it’s just not washing away quite yet. They get to her door and Lily stills - ever so slightly. The bedroom in front of her is: a big queen bed with soft white sheets, a fluffy duvet and pillows and a warm beige rug over the floorboards. An olive green throw at the foot of the bed, and a sage-painted accent wall. A gallery of prints above the headboard - lots of pinks and greens and whites. A pouffe seat the colour of flamingos next to her wardrobe. Gold and brass detailing: the frame of her mirror and her bedside lamp. ‘You haven’t changed a thing,’ she observes. 

Harry shakes his head. It took him a year to even go into her bedroom again. Lily smirks. ‘God, this décor is so 2022.’ She pauses, then, reaching inside her backpack. Turns towards him again. The light is low, her freckles a spattering of brown against her pale cheeks. ‘Here.’ She hands him something; their hands touching. Harry looks down inside his palm. It’s - his old iPod? He frowns. ‘Sorry, I stole your old coat and it had this inside the pocket,’ Lily casually explains. ‘I lost the coat, but -’ She shrugs. ‘Anyway.’

He smiles. ‘Thanks.’ Isn’t sure what to say.

‘I used it?’ she supplies, then. He is holding his breath. ‘They’re, er - they’re easy to charge with just the power of a wand. Without electricity -’ She trails off. He is clutching the iPod in his palm, almost crushing it. Makes himself release the pressure a bit. Lily smiles again: ‘You had good taste. In, like, I don’t know. 2008 or something.’

He forces a smile again. Every word that comes out of his mouth is irreparably lame. ‘What’s your favourite?’

She snorts. ‘Without Me?’

He smiles as he hugs her goodnight.

With the door closed, outside her bedroom, he stands and leans against the wall for a while. Breathing. He looks inside his palm - had completely forgot about that thing. Used to go running with it, before iPhones really took off. It’s pale blue. His finger hovers over the wheel in the middle. Navigating the menu is strangely instinctual. Harry eyes the old albums, the playlists. Top 25. He remembers Dean had come up and patented a spell that made it auto-update before Apple did. Harry feels this bizarre kinship, knowing this was the music his daughter was listening to over there. Until he clicks in and the list opens and his breath catches in his throat. The top song isn’t Without Me. He shoves the device back into the depths of his pocket and doesn’t look at it again. 

He and Ginny hug for a long time, that night, before they go to bed. Just the two of them in the dark. ‘She’s alive,’ he whispers. She nods in the moonlight. 

‘Yeah, she is.’ 

There’s a smile. There is sleep.

That year, September continues to spiral around them. They try to hold on. Three or four weeks - their house is never empty. There are: Al and James. Lily’s cousins, Ginny’s brothers and their partners, Lily’s other Hogwarts friends even. It is an endless summer of celebrations and glee, and hugs and happy tears. Lily is back with her legendary one-liners, also always graciously listening to everyone’s tales and giving them her attention. Her friends speak of their careers, of the parties they go to, of teenage crushes and the ensuing drama that never stops. She later finds out Al graduated right before she came back and buys him a belated gift for his and Scorpius’s flat. She insists they have another party, now that she’s there, even if Al himself hates parties. She also learns of James’s ex-girlfriend. Asks for news and he shrugs: ‘I mean, it’s fine, it was like a year ago, I -’ and ‘Oh no, it’s not fine!’ Lily says. Later goes out of her way to find the girl’s address and spread magical glitter all over her place. The girl later calls James in a rage, telling him his sister is an absolute ‘nutcase’ and Lily shrugs. ‘I could have done a lot worse.’ 

Harry looks at her. It’s the little things, that summer. 

She is ill with food a lot. Her stomach is having a hard time readjusting. She throws up after half the meals. Every time a door opens, she jumps. Takes the Cloak everywhere she goes. Her wand never leaves her sight. As October rolls around, the house gradually begins to empty. It’s a bit like grief, Harry thinks. The world congregates around you as a distraction and surrounds you with love and presence and attention in the early days - until it moves on. People have a life to get to. Uni and jobs and partners. That autumn, Lily spends hours on the couch in front of the TV. She is texting on her phone constantly. ‘Do you want to go for a fly?’ Ginny asks. Or: ‘Do you want to go shopping?’ he offers. ‘No, I’m fine,’ she always says, polite.

This is easy. At least, he knows what it is. 

Lily doesn’t talk about the war. They don’t make her. That is a conversation he and Ginny have very early on. There is a long scar running down her forearm, from her elbow to the back of her palm, and they all pretend it doesn’t exist. Around the Weasleys, she always wears long sleeves. ‘I don’t want to force her,’ he says to Ginny. Remembers what it was like being forced in ‘98, the pressure of the world thinking they were entitled to a story he wasn’t ready to share. Narcissa was a disaster. Ginny got to wait. 

‘Okay,’ she says. Even in this, even in the way that History most repeats itself, they try to learn from the mistakes of those who came before them. 

When Lily’s friends or their vague acquaintances become too pushy, a weird morbid appetite for details feeding their queries: ‘What was the worse thing that happened though?’ Harry jumps in to change the subject. When Mrs Weasley conversationally asks: ‘So, will you go back to Hogwarts, now?’ there is the glare of a lion protecting her cubs in Ginny’s eyes. 

‘She’ll do whatever she wants,’ Harry’s wife snaps. 

Every time Lily goes for a shower, he finds himself anxiously pacing in front of the door. It’s stupid, he knows. It’s the staring at the TV that makes him nervous, the silence, then the hurry she puts into chatting, covering, and the way that sometimes, when he asks her a question, she doesn’t answer, doesn’t hear, her mind adrift. He remembers that: the static. ‘You’re driving yourself insane,’ Ginny states. He can’t help it. He is starting to have nightmares. In the tub, the water rises, and rises, and rises, and it is all red. He feels relief every time the door opens. 

‘She isn’t you,’ Ginny says. 

When he walks down the stairs of the house, going out for runs in the middle of the night, there is buzzing outside of Lily’s bedroom door again. Like in the old days, like with Naran. Harry knows what that is about, too. He hesitates a bit - not long - before he opens the door. She is screaming in her bed. In her sleep. Her face contorted with the fear of night terrors no one else can hear. ‘Hey, hey, hey, baby wake up,’ he whispers, his palm against her shoulder. She deserves someone else to hear. 

When Lily comes to, out of breath and in a blur, Harry holds and Harry shushes until she breaks down in tears. He sits on her bed and finds a bottle of water that smells a lot like vodka under her pillow. ‘I can’t - I can’t sleep -’ she mutters. He feels his heart breaking.

Tosses the bottle by the side of the bed and holds some more. ‘Hey, hey, hey. I’m here. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.’

He stays by her side, his fingers brushing through her hair. All night. 

He and Ginny talk about sending her to therapy. Hushed tones behind Lily’s back - it’s never ideal, but. They talk about getting her her own place. ‘I don’t know, I think it helped me,’ Harry says. ‘Getting out of The Burrow.’ He feels like: they’ve both been through this, he and Gin. That’s the one advantage they have, compared to ‘98 and ‘99. When not only they were going through this, but everyone else also was, and no one had any idea what the fuck was happening. Now, he feels they should at least have mastered a formula, a Ten Steps Guide to Getting Back on your Feet that would magically solve everything. They circle back to therapy. 

Around cups of tea, one morning. He gently broaches the subject. Lily looks at him like he’s grown a second head. Then, she gets angry. Very, very angry. Her palm hitting the island with a thud. He sees himself in her again. ‘Right, you and Mum think I’m fucking crazy !’ Harry opens his mouth. ‘Are you still going to therapy?’ Lily throws back. He looks away, sighs. ‘So, don’t tell me what to bloody do.’ 

She gets off her stool and they don’t see her again until the evening. By then, ‘I’m tired,’ she says.

It’s a new thing, that autumn. After days and days of watching Grey’s Anatomy on loop, comes the tourist phase. Lily walks around London. She leaves Hampstead Heath, on foot, and walks until it gets dark. Miles and miles and miles. Central and museums and Buckingham Palace and Westminster; she just walks. Takes pictures on her phone. Autumnal sunsets and golden hours and pretty fallen leaves. Harry has nightmares that one day she will not reappear. That one day, she will have jumped in front of a train, or run in front of a car, or dived from a bridge. He can’t imagine what it would feel like, knowing that they didn’t lose her over there, but here. Right on their doorstep. 

There are a few FaceTimes with Naran. The service is getting better. Harry finds himself surprisingly happy to see her. 

To them, she apologises and apologises and apologises. ‘Mr Potter, I’m so sorry, I -’

He almost laughs. He’s always looked at and listened to Naran like he was watching a self-tape. ‘Hey, it’s alright,’ he says. 

She talks about the current state of things, in Mongolia. It sounds a lot like their own brand of post-war chaos. She talks about rebel leaders not knowing what they’re doing, the difficulties in organising an election. It’s all very familiar. ‘Well, at least we’re in charge, now,’ she smiles. ‘And we can walk around without fear of getting bombed. So, I suppose that’s a plus.’ 

‘They’re still sending aid in Hohhot, right?’ Lily asks then. ‘That’s what Hermione says?’

Harry frowns, looking at her. The phone is perched on the table in front of the three of them. He narrows his gaze. Not hostile just - surprised. ‘You been talking to Hermione?’ 

‘Yeah,’ she nods, smiling. ‘She just - I saw her at the Ministry a few times.’

‘Okay…?’

He supposes he is glad Lily is doing something with her days.     

November slowly approaches. With it, Daylight Savings Time, Lily’s birthday, and James’s now signature Hallowe’en party. ‘D’you want to come?’ he casually asks his sister, the two of them gathered around their parents’ kitchen table, lazying about in the afternoon. They’ve been spending a lot of time together, Harry’s noticed, the two of them. Brother and sister again, pushing buttons and laughing and playing James’s video games. Their eldest often manages to put a smile on her face. Lily’s been taking the piss out of him for still living at home at the tender age of twenty-four. ‘Don’t you think that’s hindering your dating prospects a bit?’

James snorts. ‘I dunno.’ There is a shrug. ‘Mum and Dad are pretty chill.’

Harry rolls his eyes, entering the kitchen as well, coming home from work. ‘Yeah, too chill,’ he interjects, laughing. James goes red in the cheeks. ‘There’s Leah and Mei and Freya and what was the other one again? It’s becoming a bit difficult to keep track, James.’

Lily chuckles. ‘You know he uses you, right?’ she smirks, turning towards Harry. ‘Being Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter’s son is, like, half the work done for him.’

Harry snorts. ‘Well, thank you, I don’t really want to know how he does the other half.’

Lily bursts out a laugh. She is choking on a drink that comes out through her nose a bit. It takes him by surprise. It’s a genuine one. He beams.

Later, when James asks again about the party, Harry hears Lily say: ‘I dunno, it’s still a bit weird. Being around people, you know?’

Her father smiles to himself. She isn’t lying anymore, at least. 

A couple weeks pass. Hallowe’en is a Sunday. That morning, Harry comes down the stairs and Lily is lounging on the sofa with tea and (strangely) one of her mother’s romance books in her hands. Ginny herself is upstairs, working. James still asleep. Harry crosses towards the hallway. ‘Mum’s not going with you?’ Lily asks. He stills. 

There is a slow shake of his head. ‘She came with me last year,’ he explains. (And, God, that was depressing. Standing there, hoping.) He crosses her gaze. ‘Do you want to?’

He hadn’t quite dared offer, to be honest. Thought about it this past week but wondered if it might be too hard to think about death again, didn’t want her to feel forced, just because she came that one time. Circumstances had changed, he thought. But, that morning, Lily just nods. Smiles a little. Bit sad, but. ‘Yeah,’ she says. 

He Apparates them to the same spot again. This has an air of déjà vu. Though, of course, everything else has changed. His daughter’s hand firmly clasped in his. Can’t explain how long he’s waited for this, that simple touch. She’s been back a few months, now, but it still surprises him. In Godric’s Hollow, the pavement is wet again, the sky overcast, but the rain has stopped. They walk the streets, the two of them; there is silence, this time. It is companionable. They lay flowers. Lily doesn’t talk to her grandparents but still, Harry stays with her a while, breathing the air. It is cold and foggy. She looks up at him. ‘D’you know where the Peverells are?’ she asks. 

‘Oh.’ He’d never thought of showing her. ‘Sure. Maybe?’ In fairness, he hasn’t been there since ‘98. ‘We can have a look.’

She nods. It takes them a while. Some of the headstones are ancient and slightly broken down, hard to read. Lily finally finds Ignotus first; she calls Harry over. By the time he joins, she’s Scourgified the dirt from the stone, and made a little flower arrangement with her wand. ‘There’s the Deathly Hallows,’ she says. 

Harry eyes the symbol. 

‘D’you reckon it really was them?’ she asks. ‘Who created them?’

He shrugs. ‘I dunno. Probably?’ There is a beat. ‘I’m honestly not sure how your grandfather ended up with the Cloak.’

Lily nods. 

The tip of her shoe disturbs a pebble. She shifts her weight on her legs. ‘I gave it away,’ she finally says. Harry’s look is sharp on her. He is almost holding his breath again, narrowed gaze and slowed-down pace. It is the first time Lily ever talks, that year. ‘I mean, I -’ she sighs. ‘We used to keep people in safehouses, you know?’ A breath. A shake of her head. ‘The Chinese, they - they always said they were only meant to organise the rebellion but -’ Lily pauses. ‘We used to also keep people we were trying to evacuate in there. Through the Floo, you know?’ Harry nods. In the quiet of the graveyard, the rustling leaves at their feet, he loosely wonders how many ended up with C.A.S.H.C.O.W. Perhaps, sometimes, directly from her care to his, or to Hannah’s. He would have liked to know that, back then, he thinks. Lily breathes. ‘When the Chinese stormed in that one time, I -’ She closes her eyes. ‘I gave it to someone. The Cloak. There was this - woman. With this little boy. I just - I don’t know,’ she admits. Her voice breaks; she swallows. ‘It was a split second decision. We couldn’t all hide under it. Me, Naran, and them. I told Naran to stay but of course she wouldn’t. That’s how they arrested us. And, I remember - it’s stupid, but I thought: “Dad is going to kill me. For losing that bloody Cloak,” you know?’ 

God. No. 

‘When Naran and I escaped, we -’ Lily continues. She closes her eyes, trails off again. Silent for a long time. ‘We eventually ended up in this village. One of the traditional ones - nomads who live in yurts in the middle of nowhere.’ Harry nods. He’s seen them online, hundreds and hundreds of hours spent Googling in circles down Mongolian rabbit holes. ‘I, er -’ She stops. Doesn’t look at him. Speaks quick. ‘I needed a Healer.’ Lily swallows. Shakes her head at the memory, it seems. ‘They helped us for days, these people. They didn’t ask who we were, didn’t ask for anything. They just - helped.’ She smiles to herself.  

‘They had an elder in charge, he looked - ancient,’ Lily lets out a low chuckle as her voice slightly breaks. ‘One day, he comes into the yurt I was in and just - gives me the Cloak back.’ Harry hears her almost laugh. ‘He said the woman had managed to escape to another village, that she’d heard I was there, I - I suppose white, red-headed women aren’t that common in Mongolia,’ Lily smiles. ‘She, er - she apparently travelled fifty miles on horseback to take the Cloak back to me. I -’ Lily hesitates. She briefly looks from the gravestone to Harry. ‘I asked the man why they didn’t sell it,’ she admits. ‘They’d kept it for days before I woke up, and - well, people never had enough for anything. He gave me this look,’ she smiles. ‘Like I’d just called him Chinese or something. Like I was insane. The crazy white woman,’ she laughs again. ‘He said it was clearly a very “noble” object. He had this level of respect in the way that he handled it, even. He’d wrapped it in a cloth. Asked how I got it and I told him: “My father.” He nodded. He had this solemn air, said: “Well, then, it can only be yours.”’

Lily pauses. Her brown gaze on his. There is a smudge of water, a drop of drizzle on her glasses. ‘They have this reverence for things, over there. For magic. I think we’ve lost it a bit here. It’s like art to them. The elders, they - they pass on this ancient knowledge about wandless charms and healings, and the way nature and the things around us interact with each other, even when you can’t see it.’ Lily breathes. ‘But they always tell you it’s the kind of thing you only get to understand “when you’re ready,” you know?’ She smiles. Air escapes through her nose. ‘The Chinese, the way they came after them, it -’ Lily sighs, shakes her head. ‘It wasn’t right, Dad. It really wasn’t.’ 

He wants to pull her close again, then. Take everything away. ‘I don’t know why I lied,’ she says. ‘When Mum asked. I didn’t even want you to know I spoke Mongolian. I didn’t want you to know. But of course, you and Mum knew. I was so stupid -’ she scoffs at herself. ‘Listening to bloody Mockingbird on repeat over there, trying to hang onto something, I - I’m not okay, Dad.’ Harry closes his eyes. It hurts like a knife, that. ‘And I feel like no one understands,’ she adds, rolling her eyes. ‘Which I know is also stupid because everyone over the age of forty understands. Because you and Mum do understand, I just -’

He shakes his head again, then. Instinctively stops resisting, puts his arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s not stupid,’ he tells her. He felt the same. Everyone was going through the same thing at the same time and he still felt the same. Every war is the same and every war is different. 

‘Did you want to kill yourself?’ she asks. There is silence. He cocks his head. Honest. 

‘Not really.’ A shrug. ‘I think I just - didn’t care.’ Lily nods. ‘After a while, it goes away. You find things to live for again.’

‘Yeah.’ 

She looks at the grave again. 

‘Do you wish I hadn’t gone?’ she says.

‘Every day.’ 

He will never not wish he’d been able to keep her here. Let the war end with them, break the cycle. They got three out of four right, but it still wasn’t good enough.

Lily smiles. ‘Mum would have been disappointed. If I had let Naran go on her own.’ Harry rolls his eyes. Has always thought it was just something Ginny said to keep herself sane. But: there is an expression that is almost mischievous, almost amused in Lily’s gaze, now. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ she smiles. ‘Mum’s always been a lot more principled than you are.’ 

The silence is comfortable again, between them. Lily looks at Ignotus’s grave and steps away a bit, turns towards Harry. Her voice is suddenly more timid, on the edge of a precipice. ‘I couldn’t,’ Lily tells him. ‘I couldn’t leave her alone.’ Her voice breaks. ‘I would have killed myself with the guilt if I hadn’t gone. You know that, right?’

Harry nods. Pulls her close again. ‘I know, baby. I know.’

He’s never been one to judge people for jumping in front of trains, you know?

Later that morning, they walk around the village again. There is something a bit lighter, in Lily’s step. They get caught in the rain and hide in a pub. There is a lit fireplace and wooden floors and tables and pannelings - wooden everything. Cosy. Lily orders a pint; he shakes his head. ‘Two Coke Zeros,’ he says. Has the aura of a father, so the barman listens. Lily looks at him. ‘It’s not the solution,’ Harry tells her. ‘Trust me.’  

They sit down. Continue to talk for a bit. Lily mentions her brothers. ‘Al read the book, you know? Mum’s book,’ she says. Harry does a bit of a double-take. She supplies: ‘While I was away. He didn’t tell you.’ (Clearly.) ‘Thought you would get upset, he didn’t want to add that to your plate.’ (Al, always.) ‘I think he was trying to understand - something,’ Lily says. 

He sighs. Maybe, he and Ginny will have to talk to Al again, won’t they? Some things never change. 

‘James won’t read it,’ Lily adds, matter-of-fact. ‘I thought about it but now, I dunno. I don’t have good memories of it being written, you know?’ Harry’s gaze lifts to meet hers. ‘It was like I didn’t have parents for a year.’ He cringes. She shrugs. ‘Taught me to fight for what I believed in, though, so.’

His mouth twists. ‘I’m sorry.’ The casualties of their own reckless train-jumping. He asks a question he doesn’t really want to ask. ‘Did you -’

She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says, swallows. ‘That, no.’

‘Okay,’ he just says.

For a moment, they talk about the press again. The fascination for James’s partying, his continuous string of girlfriends. For his break-up last year. ‘They’re acting like he’s the heir to some throne,’ Lily rolls her eyes. ‘Like they’ve got a stake in his life. I don’t know why they keep doing that.’ Harry sighs. He wishes he could change that, too. ‘He’s doing better now, though. I think,’ Lily admits. Harry nods. There is a pause. ‘I’m sorry I never wrote to you,’ she adds, then. ‘In case I -’ Lily shakes her head, trails off. She has cast Muffliatos around them both. ‘I wanted the last thing I said to you to be “I love you.” The last thing you said to me, too.’ 

A bit sad, a bit knowing, a half-smile. Harry nods. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees.

Lily looks down at their hands, then. At the empty Coke bottles on the table. There is that scar between them again, it spreads. Harry is looking at it. ‘I almost died,’ she tells him. He inhales. ‘That day, when we escaped, I -’ She closes her eyes. She and Naran ran out. It was chaos, she says, they were getting shot at. ‘We found a car. They followed us. Naran was driving, she - she lost control. Drove us into a tree. The can spun into a ravine, I - we had to run and run and run to hide, I didn’t realise I was bleeding so much. She said she’d never seen that much blood, she said -’

He reaches over, squeezes her hand. Doesn’t know what else to do. She cries, Lily, wiping her tears with the tips of her fingers under her glasses for a while. ‘Dad, I killed someone.’

Harry exhales. He swallows. Eyes closed for a second, he nods. Squeezes again. Wishes he could wrap his big, strong Daddy around her again, like when she was little, like when he could make everything better right away. ‘It’s okay,’ he tells her, then. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

They pass the house on the way back. Lily stops before it, still intrigued, studying it. Harry’s not sure why, but he opens the gate to show her around the little front garden. ‘After the war, people had left a lot of messages and stuff, all around here,’ he explains, pointing at the general area they’re stepping through. 

‘Really? Did you keep them?’

He smiles, nods, once. ‘We did.’ Then, corrects: ‘Well, Samira did. A couple years after the war, we’d also received a lot of stuff in Grimmauld. She organised our mail and stored everything. It’s actually why we hired her in the first place.’ 

Lily smirks. ‘Wow. From mail person to comms director of the Ministry of Magic, that’s some career progression,’ she quips. 

She doesn’t ask him again though, that morning. Strangely, Harry doesn’t think she needed to. He watches her climb a couple of stairs up the porch and her palm easily wraps around the handle of the door. He is about to tell her what he learnt over twenty years ago - that it will only open to his touch - but it turns out it opens to hers, too. He smiles. Blood magic, he gathers. She asks, then. ‘Do you want to come in?’ 

He half warns. ‘I don’t think it’s safe, Lils.’ Structural integrity and all that. 

She just laughs. 

That day, Harry Potter waits for his daughter outside his own parents’ home. Out on the front steps, the rain has stopped - he watches life go by. Somehow knows that they did watch after her, his mum and dad. When Lily was over there, they protected her. More than the Cloak, perhaps. She reappears about ten minutes later and plops herself down at his side. She feels lighter again, happier. Looks at his hands, frowns to herself. ‘Give me your phone,’ she says. 

He snorts. Obeys.

‘So this was a test?’ he laughs. She navigates the icons. Left him here unsupervised to see what he would do. She animatedly nods. ‘And, I also wanted to see inside the house,’ she admits. ‘It’s gross - I mean, it needs a good clean up,’ she chuckles. ‘And, there is a family of nifflers living in your bedroom, I’m afraid. There’s, like, fifty of them. Multiple generations, I’d say.’ He can’t help but giggle a little. ‘But anyway,’ she grins, handing him the phone back. ‘1059 days, that’s good. I’m very proud.’ 

He smiles. 

‘Hermione’s told me she’s going to reshuffle,’ Lily tells him.There is a beat. It’s two years to the next elections. ‘You should talk to her. Tell her you need to be Head of the DMLE.’ 

Harry scoffs, shakes his head. ‘I don’t think that’s how it works.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘She doesn’t know how ask! You told her no last time. And then, you weren’t - er - available, let’s say.’

He raises an eyebrow. Does he even want to be Head of the DMLE? Still kind of hates the fucking place, if he’s honest. Also Hawk said it was time to stop, and he was probably right. 

‘Things have changed, though, haven’t they?’ Lily pushes. ‘She said to me she was going all in, now that the international stuff’s quieter now. Make sure Philomena Nott goes down and never comes back up. You can’t let her fight on her own,’ she says.

He gives her a knowing side eye. She’s still good, Lily. Knows what buttons to push. Maybe. ‘We’ll see.’

She catches his gaze. ‘We’re not together, you know?’ his daughter adds, then. He frowns. ‘Me and Naran.’ (Ah.) ‘She’s just my best friend. People don’t understand that. That you’d do all of this for a friend. But, you do, don’t you?’

He nods. ‘Yeah.’ 

Another pause, he crosses her gaze again.

‘Do you want to go back?’

That’s another question he’s had, but hasn’t really wanted to ask for a very long time. If Lily does want to go back to Mongolia, he supposes that she can. He supposes that’s the thing about your children, too. They have to make their own choices. Even when all you want is to keep them by your side. But, ‘No,’ Lily shakes her head, that day. Amends: ‘Well, maybe someday to see people. Like, on holidays.’ The idea sounds mad, it makes them both chuckle a little, but almost thirty years after their war, Harry supposes people do holiday in wizarding London now, so. ‘But not to help with the rebuilding,’ Lily admits. ‘It’s not my war. It was never my war. I fought it for her, that’s all. It’s not my country to fix.’ She smiles again, seems to remember something. ‘I need my own “castle” to rebuild, you know?’

And: ‘I know you said it,’ she adds again, then. Looks around. At the street. At her arms set on her knees. ‘That this would be harder?’ Like a question, her inflexion goes up. ‘I didn’t believe you.’

He shrugs. No one ever does. Their shoulders touch. ‘I know.’ He turns his face to look at her again. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ he finally says. ‘I love you. Your mum too.’

They’ll make do.

In bed, later that night, Harry is smiling a little as he tells Ginny they talked. He doesn’t say what Lily said, specifically - doesn’t need to, she will tell her mother, eventually. Or, she will tell her different things. It’s okay. ‘She wants to renovate the house in Godric’s Hollow,’ he announces. Ginny raises an eyebrow. 

‘Really?’ 

‘Yeah.’ 

Ginny smirks. 

They let her, later, that winter, that spring. Let Lily rebuild, literally. The labour, the physicalness of it, being able to see immediate results - she says it helps. For six months, that year, between November 2027 and April of 2028, Lily fixes up his parents’ house. Her grandparents’ house. She pulls carpet and restores floors, finds a new home for the Nifflers in the garden. ‘I built them a little shed,’ she says. ‘They seem happy enough.’ Slowly, she learns to do plaster and caulk and tiling, and also learns to smile again, more. She works in old clothes Ginny laughs at and insists need to go straight in the bin once she’s done. When Lily wants to annoy her mother, these days, she gives her big hugs, full of dust. ‘Oh, for Merlin’s sake!’ Ginny giggles. 

Ginny laughs again as well. 

Around March, Lily sits her parents down. Harry hasn’t seen an announcement this solemn in the Potter household since Albus told them about him and Scorpius. She is nervous, their daughter, he can tell - has a plan, but needs funding. For that, it’ll be her mother who needs convincing. ‘I don’t want to live in it,’ she explains. ‘It’s where they died. I -’ Lily trails off. Harry can’t blame her. Neither he nor Ginny were ever able to even go in for that specific reason, so. ‘But, I was wondering,’ she turns to Harry. ‘Would you be willing to open it up?’ 

He frowns. ‘Like rent it out?’

‘No, I was thinking -’ She shakes her head. Deep breath. ‘More like a museum?’ 

Lily’s spoken to Samira, she explains. Managed to unearth the old letters and notes from back in the day. ‘Maybe we could have an exposition,’ she says. ‘Tell people’s stories? Obviously, those who agree, I’d ask permission, but -’ There are lots of personal war tales in these letters, she says. Harry’s parents were not the only ones. She was not the only one. All those wars fought over many decades. ‘It could be a house to honour the dead,’ Lily says. ‘And, to tell the stories of the living. Tell the stories of how people survived this,’ she nods to herself. ‘We could have a small entry fee, donate what’s left to C.A.S.H.C.O.W. and to the Mongolian fund after operating costs.’ Harry can’t help but smile. Lily shrugs a little. ‘I just - I dunno, it’s your house, and -’

He shakes his head. ‘It’s not really my house.’ It’s his parents’. At this point, given the work she’s put in, it’s his daughter’s. His house is this one. The one he has built with Ginny. With their three kids. They’ve had to move around quite a bit, but it’s not the physicality of it. It’s the memories of James’s first steps in their shitty flat back in Central. It’s the memories of having to move every year or so, because they either kept getting kicked out by greedy landlords or having more children. It’s bringing baby Lily home to the first solid walls they owned, back in Crouch End. It’s this new one here, where all of their adult children laugh and tease each other, and love to come to at the weekends. 

So: ‘Okay,’ Harry easily says. He reckons his parents would have loved the idea as well. 

There is a Grand Opening, that year. It is scheduled for the 3rd of June 2028. The press and the whole bloody world will be there. They picked it on purpose, a month and a day after the thirtieth anniversary. It’s been thirty years. Imagine that. Harry is going on fifty. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Ron claims his back aches when he bends down to retrieve fallen objects, now. ‘Thank God for magic, we’re too old to exist,’ he quips. 

Lily has them over a couple days before. It is the 1st of June. At the Ministry, Hermione’s kindly given Harry the day off. (Because, yeah, that happened as well. He is back. Back again. No comment.) So: today is the Grand Opening ‘for family and friends,’ Lily claims. She initially suggested the previous weekend, but Ginny shook her head. It was still May. ‘We do this in June,’ she said. Lily nodded. 

His girls have also talked amongst themselves, now, Harry knows. They’re okay. Kind of. All of them are still ‘kind of’ okay. Lily has nightmares, sometimes, but she doesn’t cast Muffliatos anymore. Just lets her parents hold her when she needs them to. Lets her brothers tease and take the piss out of her, when she needs them to. She’ll be fine, Harry can tell. Like they all are. Like everyone is. He’s never been one to pry into other people’s business, but he doubts they’re the only family on Earth who’s ever had to fight for generations, one way or another. Little by little, things get better.

Their little group arrives in Godric’s Hollow, that morning, and there are already a few people crowding the street. Teddy and Andromeda, he recognises, and Ron, and a bunch of Ginny’s brothers and their spouses and her parents. The house looks - gorgeous from the street. Harry hadn’t seen it since last October. He notices, rather amused, that Lily also seems to know everyone in the village, now. Stops and greets neighbours and old couples as they walk up to the place. ‘People were happy that someone,’ she starts, looking at her father pointedly, ‘finally took care of this poor house.’ She laughs. ‘They protected it from intruders for years. It deserved some love!’ She grins at him.

The whitewash of the walls is actually white, now. There aren’t any chunks falling off. The little front garden is also tidy, lively, and flowery. Roses, hydrangeas and lavender. Sunflowers in a pot. ‘Narantsetseg means “sunflower,”’ she tells them. ‘Did you know that?’ Lily’s friend is coming in July to see everyone; Lily hopes they will survive until then. ‘I suppose it’s a habit everywhere,’ she comments. ‘Naming girls after flowers, right?’ Harry’s daughter’s kept the ivy up the wall, he notices, but has tidied it up. She tells him some of her Hufflepuff friends have helped cast spells to prevent it from attacking the roof tiles. The window frames are clean and the glass sparkles. The front door repainted a bright Gryffindor red. Even the front gate no longer squeaks. 

The boys are there too, that day. Hermione isn’t, but she will be there for the Grand Opening itself. Hopefully, like that, Lily will get even more attention from the press. They are hoping it’ll help drive the donations up. Mongolia still needs their help.

Their group now walks up, chaotically crowding the front of the gate. Chatting about and pointing things out, trying not to step on anyone’s toes in the process. The entrance is tight. Lily is excitedly explaining all the things she did with the place. ‘There’s also a visitors’ book a little bit further down,’ she says, ‘for other people to tell their stories. It’s not just about wars themselves. It’s about all the ways humans fight. How we can survive anything,’ she tells him. Harry breathes out, smiling.

He and Ginny are about to walk past the threshold. She pauses - the love of his life - to look at him. ‘You alright?’ she asks. 

Harry smiles. Calm. The air comes in, and out of his lungs. It’s okay. He can almost feel them watching. They’re happy. Happy for him. He is certain. ‘Yeah.’

Harry takes her hand, then. Tight in his, as he steps forwards. The kids grin at them. ‘Oh, you two are cute,’ James teases.

Harry beams. They rebuilt another beautiful castle, he thinks. 

.

THE END