"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves."

- Eric Hoffer

"Are you out of your mind?" Harry questioned, his eyes wide with shock at the words his father had just said.  Immediately, he raised his head up to the heavens and rolled his eyes in a very familiar way.

It was a look James had steadily grown accustomed to in the last three years.  While Harry might look like an adult already at the young age of fourteen, he certainly didn't act like one.  However, he had expected this behavior on tonight, as he could tell that Harry did not know how to cope with the situation which had been dealt to him a few weeks ago.  James didn't honestly know how to deal with it either and frankly, he could tell that Harry was in much deeper turmoil than himself over the recent news.

He had anticipated this as well.  What kind of young wizard would react well to learning that his father wasn't really his?  None!  It was the kind of thing that one expected to find in great fictitious novels, not in real life!

Yet here it was, a supernatural situation that was uncommon even in the wizarding world, where the extraordinary was rarely given a second thought.  Needless to say, it wasn't everyday that a wizard went through his attic and found a letter from his friend who was long dead.  And if a wizard did find a letter addressed to him from the deceased, it certainly wasn't to tell him that his one night stand had resulted in the creation of a child that was still living and disguised as a child of someone else.

The odds of such a scenario ever coming to life were over one in a million, but such was the luck in his life.  He had not only lost his wife, but apparently was going to lose full rights to the child whom he had raised to his life-long enemy, Severus Snape.

Naturally, it just had to be Severus.

Honestly, James wasn't too terribly surprised.  He had always been jealous of the way Lily had cared for her oldest magical friend.  Even after she had cast Severus away from herself in favor of him, he had always caught the furtive looks that would pass between the two during classes and even out on the street.  Even though they never spoke to each other, even though she refused to admit it, James had always known there was still something there.  He just hadn't known how much.

Now he did.

Now everyone did, as Severus had wasted no time contacting the authorities after he found the letter and verified that the contents were indeed written by Lily.  James' name had been splashed across the top of the Daily Prophet now for weeks, resulting in an inordinate amount of pity from everyone he knew, as well as complete strangers. 

And now that the truth was out, courtesy of Severus' malignant desires, he had lost full custody of his son.  Despite how Severus had treated his son during his last few years at Hogwarts, apparently he felt the need to get to know his biological son. 

Of course, this was the largest load of shite James had ever heard.  Severus had made it more than clear that he hated the boy during his Potions class, which he had been receiving a Troll in since day one of his first year.

No, James knew who Severus was really after...

Himself.

Severus wanted to hurt him.  After all of the years that had passed since Hogwarts, he still couldn't seem to let the past go.  It was sad, really.  Sad and pathetic, seeing as he was bringing Harry into their squall even though he had nothing to do with it.

Besides, Lily had been dead for years now; who cared anymore?  In the end, neither of them had been able to save her from the hand that fate dealt.  He knew Severus would never forgive him for marrying her though, even though it seemed he had won in the end.

He was the one who created a child with Lily.  That had really haunted James for the past weeks.  He had never doubted Lily during their marriage, never once.  Why didn't he know that this had happened?  Why would she even turn to Severus when he had been so loving towards her?  Had his love not been enough?

Or perhaps she never really had cared the way he thought she had. 

Maybe it was all a sham.

No matter how much James tried to shake those nagging thoughts away, they still haunted him, keeping him awake during the darkest hours of the night until he potioned himself to sleep.  Of course, he yearned to know the truth, but sadly it didn't exist anymore because it had died along with his wife.

He would be sleepless for the rest of his life.

Because of all of this, James knew there was only one real thing to do; it was the only reasonable course of action on top of being the right thing to do...

"You want me to be nice to the bastard?!  What the hell is wrong with you?!  He slept with your wife!" Harry cried out with dismay, gradually getting louder as he threw his hands above his head as to express his viable anger.

"Harry," James uttered in a voice that was clearly trying to placate the boy, "I know this isn't an ideal situation, but getting worked up isn't going to solve any of your problems.  I'm asking you to please calm down so we can talk about something important before he gets here-"

"Be nice to him, huh?" Harry spat out with a darkness that was uncharacteristic of him.  "Perhaps if he likes me then he can get full custody, right?  Then I'll be out of your hair forever, James!  I bet that's what you want since I'm not really your son!"

James took a staggering breath in as he watched Harry hurriedly swish his angry tears away, embarrassed that he was crying in front of his father.  That is, if he considered James his father today.

He seemed to have been teetering between tremendous loyalty towards James and having no father at all during the last few weeks.  With his hormones already influencing his emotions to an extreme, Harry had been all over the place emotionally during the last few weeks.  Therefore, his outburst today did not come as a shock.

"Harry, you know that's not true.  Now if you can't stop yelling at me, then I'll go into my office until you're ready to speak like an adult," James said, his patience waning.  The conversation wasn't going at all as he had planned.

"I don't want to speak like an adult!" Harry yelled back unabashedly, his cheeks flushing with rage.  "You're abandoning me!  If you really cared about me, you wouldn't make me go with him!"

James looked at Harry sadly, sighed, then turned and walked away from him.  "What?  Don't walk away from me!  I'm not done!  How could you let that bastard take me from you?  Why?  Why?!" Harry exclaimed, getting louder with every word.

As James opened his office door, he heard Harry storm up behind him.  Quickly, he shut the door and barricaded himself in the confines of his office, locking it with a wordless twist of his wand.  Stronger than a regular locking spell, which James knew Harry could break, he secured himself in the office and stood at the door, listening to Harry rant and rave outside the door.

"This is ruining my fucking life!" he heard Harry scream from the other side of the door.  "I can't believe this is bloody happening to me!"

Feeling rather weary, James put his wand up to his neck and projected his voice one last time to Harry.  "Harry, I love you, but you need to calm down.  I'll come check on you in twenty minutes.  If you're ready to speak maturely, we'll talk.  If not, you'll have to go with Severus without speaking with me first.  You think about it and decide which you'd rather do."

"I don't fucking want either, James!  I don't ever want to see you or that bastard Snape again!  I can't-"

Harry's yelling abruptly stopped as James silenced the room with a swirl and pop of his wand.  With a sigh, James slowly placed his wand on the worn wood of his cherished desk.  He carefully lowered himself into the chair, wrapping his arms around himself as he sat.  He then leaned forward so that he could limply stare at the knees of his traditional khaki pants.

He felt hopeless, alone, and vulnerable.

Clearly his son needed more help dealing with this unlikely scenario than he could possibly hope to provide.  Unfortunately, he was realizing this a few days too late.  Snape would be angrily rapping on their door by the end of the hour and would be taking Harry with him, despite the fact that the boy was unraveling at the seams.

He hoped that Harry would let go of his anger long enough to speak with him before he had to leave.  There was nothing that James wanted more than to hold the boy tightly against him and comfort him.  It was what he needed, even though James knew he wouldn't admit to it.  Harry was obviously conflicted about the whole situation and didn't know what he wanted.

Even though James understood that, his son's harsh words continued to play through his head like a broken record.  Harry had implied that James was abandoning him, leaving his helpless for the serpent that would tempt him with unthinkable evil.  After all, Merlin only knew what Severus really had planned for Harry when they arrived at Spinner's End.  Nothing good could come of it though; of that James was certain.

His little boy thought he was abandoning him.

A misty haze filled James' eyes and his jaw quivered for a minute while he tried to get a hold of himself.  Deep down, James certainly knew how far from the truth it really was, but it still disturbed him because he felt like it was true, to an extent.  At the trial, there had been nothing he could do to prevent his son from falling into the arms of his enemy.

His precious son...

His.

To hell with Severus Snape!  Harry Potter was and always would be his son!  He had held Harry when he was just minutes old.  He had watched Harry's first steps and had taken him to his very first Quidditch game.  All of those memories were priceless and Severus could never take those away from him or his son!

As fast as his flash of anger had come, it was suddenly gone again.  James had told himself he couldn't act this way about the situation; that he would be the mature one and would not sink down to Severus' level no matter how much he was provoked.

Worn down, James cautiously cracked open the door and peeked into the dim corridor.  He was not surprised when he saw his son's gangly body slouched down against the opposite wall.  Tentatively, green eyes met his own brown ones for a moment before they turned back towards the floor.

"Sorry," Harry mumbled, more to the worn wooden floor than to himself.

"Apology accepted," James replied gently.  He stared at his son's miserable state for a moment, before slowly turning around and sliding down the wall until he was sitting next to Harry.  James, however, knew he could not stare at the floor without getting a terrible kink in his back, and thus stared up at the ceiling with the same intrigue as tourists at the Sistine Chapel.

"Harry... I-"

"Don't you dare say that you understand what I'm going through because you don't, okay?  You're not me; you don't know how I feel!" Harry cried out, still clearly on-edge about the whole situation.

James sighed at his abrasiveness.  This was not going to be easy.

"I wouldn't say that, Harry.  I know you've been put in a terrible position in this mess and for that, I'm very sorry."

His sincerity must have rung true because not a moment later, two green orbs quickly met his face again.  "Then what were you going to say?"

Now that he had Harry's full attention though, he simply could not find the words he was looking for.  He decided to try and give his son some advice, even though he tended to be pants at it.  "I wanted to say that this is going to be one of the hardest things you'll have to do in your life."

"Thank you Captain obvious," was the muttered response he received.

James furrowed his brow.  That hadn't come out right, but still, he didn't deserve to be treated this way by his son!  "You know how I feel about sarcasm..."

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?  I'm sorry I'm such a bad person and I'm sorry I can't seem to say or do anything right!  I'm just so angry... and I don't know what to do!" Harry exclaimed, finally letting the barrier between them down a bit.

Honestly, this admission of weakness and mortality reassured him about Harry's perseverance.  After all, everyone said that admitting you had a problem was half of the battle.  James had begun to think that all Harry would do was pass the blame onto those around him for his misfortunes.  Luckily, this wasn't the case.

"I don't either," he replied quietly.

Both of them sat in silent misery for quite some time.  James dug around for the right words in his head-words that would comfort his son...

There weren't any though.  He could say nothing that would change this situation.  There was nothing that could make this any better.  In fact, there was probably nothing that could make it any worse.  James could not imagine anything worse happening to them than exactly what was happening right now.

Huh.  Well, Snape probably thought this wasn't a good thing either.  Not at this point anyway.  James was certain that revenge had certainly been the first thing on Severus' mind when he'd begun this controversy, but it probably wasn't now that he'd actually gotten his way.

Now he'd have to deal with the situation as well...

Now he'd have to live with Harry.

"Severus probably doesn't know what to do either," James said, hoping it would comfort his son. 

It didn't.

"Yes he does!  He's going to torture me!  He hates me!  He hates me so much!" Harry wailed, no longer thinking coherently.  A few tears were rolling down his cheeks and he quickly smeared them away, leaving a messy residue all over his face.

Like a true dad, James had his arm around his son in an instant and pulled him in close to him, giving him a few pats of consolation.  "Harry, I don't want you thinking that way.  If he's going after anyone by doing this, it's me.  You are simply caught in the middle."

"What?" he blubbered, looking so miserable to James that he felt his heart start to break.

"Remember how I told you about how your mother and him were friends back when we were all at school?" James asked hesitantly, hoping that this wouldn't upset him even more.

When Harry started to nod as he wiped away a few more tears, James continued.  "They weren't just friends; they were best friends.  You know, the sort who you never see apart from one another?  They were like that for five whole years...

"I was jealous," James said, pausing to rack up the strength to talk about his childhood sins.  "I wanted Lily to spend more time with me and Gryffindor friends, rather than the odd Slytherin swot who had no other friends.  I thought Lily could do better than that, deserved better than that.  And so, I did the one thing that a teenage boy could do.

"I tormented him.  My friends and I, we did everything we could to bother him day after day.  He never got any peace with us around.  Of course I feel horrible about it now and I do hope you know better than to act that way toward him, but at the time, I didn't know any better and so I did what I could to make Severus' life a living hell.

"That's why he's doing this Harry.  He can't forgive me for what I've done and so he's decided to... to take it out on you..." he said, mumbling though the last part shamefully.

James waited for Harry to reply, hoping that his son wouldn't go off on another tangent about how awful he was.  He knew Harry didn't care for bullies and so to admit that he had once been one was a truly nerve-wracking experience for James.

"That's... that's terrible, dad," Harry replied with a sniff.  "Didn't you ever try to apologize?"

"Of course I did!" James explained defensively.  "I tried several times, but the damage was already done.  He's not going to let it go, Harry.  Not now, not ever."

"Then why in the name of Merlin do you want me to be nice to him?!" Harry questioned exasperatedly, while rolling his eyes towards the ceiling.  "If you've really apologized several times and he hasn't let it go, then there's nothing that I'm going to be able to do to fix this!"

"Wait, now let me explain this.  I don't want you to object to anything until I've finished, okay?" James asked.

Upon receiving an uncertain nod of approval from Harry, James continued with a remorseful look on his face.  "Please try to understand that we are two very lucky wizards, Harry.  We grew up in homes with families who loved us.  We have friends to turn to when things go wrong.  There has always been someone in our world who cares what happens to us.

"The same is not true for Severus.  Your mother used to tell me horror stories about how his parents treated him.  She was his only friend; the only person he could turn to while he was growing up.  When he became too dark for her, he had no one.  There wasn't a single person who really cared about him in the whole world.  No one has ever cared about him since Lily, and therefore he really doesn't care about himself-"

"But it really just seems like he only cares about himself, right?  Couldn't his problem just be selfishness?" Harry asked, looking confused.  "I mean, it's sad and all that he didn't have anyone, but I don't understand why he's so mean to people if he needs to find someone who cares for him."

"Ah, you see it seems like selfishness," James said, raising his pointer finger as he started to explain.  "It isn't though.  He isn't mean to keep people away.  He's mean because that's the way he's been treated all of these years.  He doesn't understand kindness because he's never been shown any.  Not since Lily, anyway.  He only understands negative emotions and so those are the ones he uses on all of the people around him, not realizing that it pushes them away."

Harry sighed and tightened his arms around his knees.  "Wow... that's deep Dad.  I guess you're probably right.  I had never thought about any of that before."

"I figured as much.  I doubt many people think about that really, but it's true.  The things that happen in people's lives really do shape who they are.  Sadly, I helped shape the person that Severus is.  I helped make him the condescending man he is today and I deeply regret it.  That's why I'm asking you to do the opposite of what I did, Harry.  I don't want you to look back and have the regrets that I did.  I want you to look back and know that you took the higher moral ground, no matter how Severus treats you during the weekend."

"The higher ground, huh?"

"You know, the whole ‘treat other people the way you'd like to be treated' bit.  I'm sure Severus will try to do everything in his power to make you angry at him, but you'll be better off in the long run if you don't let him."

Harry sighed and rubbed his hands over his face several times before continuing.  "I guess I can try, but I make no guarantees.  That man makes me really angry sometimes."

James watched his son's face sink back into desolation when he looked down at the watch he was wearing.  He quickly buried his face in his legs and groaned softly.

This prompted James to look down at his own watch; he decided that he and Harry's feelings were mutual.  There were only five minutes to go before Severus would waltz up to their front door and change their lives forever.  James didn't know what he'd do once it happened.  He had no idea how he was going to be able to cope with this mental situation without a distraction like Harry to take some of it off his mind.

He'd be all alone thinking about how his wife someone got away from him for a night and spent it with Severus.  How she betrayed him and lied to him about his son...

It was more than he could bear on his own.

"Dad..."

James looked up to see two startlingly green eyes looking at him intensely.  Uncertainly.  The hesitant look in his son's eyes made him feel a bit shaken.  "Yes?"

"I... I was just... never mind," he finished ungracefully, looking down and scratching the back of his head nervously.

"You can tell me, Harry, no matter what it is," James reminded his son dutifully, secretly bracing himself for the worst.

"Well... you know... I wanted..." he stuttered unceremoniously.

"You wanted what?" James asked, putting a hand over Harry's shoulder, trying to make him feel more comfortable talking to him.

"I wanted to make sure we were still... you know..." Harry said, gently swinging his hand back and forth between them as if trying to signify something.

"Father and son?" James guessed, trying to fill in the blank.

Suddenly, Harry looked very insecure.  He shyly nodded, then chewed on his lip a bit as he looked down.

A sympathetic smile turned up the sides of James' lips as he pulled his son into a bear hug.  "Harry, I don't honestly give a damn what those blood tests say.  I've spent almost everyday with you for the last fourteen years-you are my son, no matter what Severus or anyone else says.  I was with you when you were born and I raised you; nothing can change that.  You will always be my son and I will always love you."

He squeezed his son even tighter when he felt a couple of tremors run through his body.  "I was just... worried... since he stole Mum from you that you wouldn't... anymore..." he heard Harry rasp into his ear as his son wrapped his arms around him to return the hug.  A couple warm droplets of liquid slid down James' neck and into the collar of his shirt, but he didn't care.  All that mattered was that his son knew he was there for him, no matter what happened.

"He may have taken Lily, but he can never take away the love I have for you.  Never," James firmly replied, patting his son one last time on the back before pulling away from him. 

Together, they both leaned up against the wall in silence for the next few minutes.  Then, like clockwork, a harsh knock could be heard from the front room, right on the hour.  Harry quickly drew in a deep breath upon hearing it and looked over to James for guidance.

James was on the verge of breaking down himself, but forced himself to put up a strong stance for the sake of his son.  He noiselessly stood up and offered Harry a hand, which he gingerly accepted. 

"Remember, take the higher ground.  Leave no regrets, Harry," James gently reminded his son while he had his attention.  Harry nodded with pursed lips.

As they walked down the hallway, James mumbled to himself, "Okay, here we go..."  Then, with a flick of his wand, he summoned Harry's trunk, which banged down the stairwell, creating a ruckus.

After shrinking the trunk, James turned around and put it in his son's hands.  "Ready?" he questioned, trying his best to sound positive even though he was on the verge of vomiting.

He received the same nod as he had before.  His poor little boy was stunned and frightened into silence.  Slightly slumped with dismay, James turned back towards the door, looking at the dark shadow outside the patterned glass window in the door.  He took a breath while putting his hand on the rusty brass knob, then gently turned it and opened the door.

And at that moment, everything in James' world changed.

The End.