Phoebe had always advised Harry that when the children were old enough to ask questions, they were old enough for the answers. Dudley concurred on this point, although cautioning Harry to make sure he was answering the questions that the children were actually asking.

Harry always wished fervently that the adults around him had taken this view when he was a child. Petunia's repeated admonishments to not ask questions had left him always feeling adrift, Dumbledore's obsession with secrecy had endangered his life (and other people's) on more than one occasion, and the other adults in his life had been so intent on protecting him that he had taken up eavesdropping and spying as a hobby. Harry really didn't want his children to follow in those footsteps.

It was hard sometimes to trust his instincts with the children, but he had gotten better with practice. Strangely, situations with Tim were easier to deal with than the issues between himself and James. Ginny was fond of saying that Harry and James were alike in all the wrong ways.

The thought of James made Harry's heart twist; James still wasn't talking to him. Yesterday, the young man had stopped at the house to see his mother and his siblings, but left before Harry came home from work. Ginny and Harry had had words in the kitchen last night, Ginny thought that Harry needed to apologize to James, "You're getting more like my mother every year," she'd snapped. "He's twenty years old, not a child."

Ron was even telling Harry he was being unreasonable. Ron had come over last night for a chat about it and to try to make some sort of peace between the two of them, complaining that they were both being pigheaded about the whole thing.

No, James wasn't a child, but Ginny and Ron didn't comprehend how tenuous the safe world that he'd built for himself felt some days. Harry knew in his bones that it could all be snatched away in a second.

He and Molly did indeed have that in common. Molly had lost her two brothers and her parents in the First Death Eater War, and she'd lost her son in the Second.

Gideon and Fabian had been in the original Order of the Phoenix, and were killed during a raid. She'd told him about it, late one night, not long after the War ended, when he'd been living at the Burrow. That year had been a hectic and difficult one. Arthur often worked late at the Ministry and Molly always stayed up, waiting for him. Harry had a lot of difficulty sleeping and often had a quiet cup of tea with her.

One of those nights, Molly had told Harry how she'd been pregnant with Fred and George when her brothers had been killed. There hadn't been enough of them left to bury.

Molly understood waking up in the middle of the night and calming one's fears by checking to make sure the children were still breathing. She had understood when the last time Harry had cleared a boggart out of the closet; it had taken the form of his eldest child lying still and cold on the floor.

James thought he was invulnerable and Harry just didn't know how to cope with the idea of his son putting himself into danger, day in and day out. Harry got chills when he thought about arriving at St Mungo's and the anxious wait to see James. When they had finally been allowed into the treatment room, after Roz had gotten through with him, his robes were still covered with blood. However, rather than the white-faced, shaken young man Harry expected to see (especially after the tongue-lashing they'd heard Roz give him), James was chatting up the very pretty young healer who was feeding him blood replenishers.

The young Auror had been inordinately proud of himself, for someone who had just been disciplined for violating procedure.

Grudgingly, Harry was willing to admit that being suspended for a week was punishment enough. Plus, he'd heard, with some satisfaction, Roz reading her newest Auror the riot act. They probably wouldn't have argued if James hadn't been so cavalier about the whole thing, brushing off his parent's concern like it was mere paranoia.

It was so like Sirius that, for a moment, all Harry could think of was his godfather falling through the Veil. He hadn't intended to argue with James, he truly hadn't.

Harry winced when he remembered how he'd called James reckless and irresponsible. It had devolved into the shouting match at home when James had brought up the War-he said it wasn't as though Harry had any room to talk about procedure, given that he'd hared off after a dark wizard when he was seventeen.

Few things made him lose his temper these days, but James seemed to have a knack for it.

Harry sighed, glancing at his youngest child, who walked beside him. Tim was upset that James and Harry were arguing. James and Tim were very fond of each other.

When Tim had first come to live with them, he'd been rather frightened of James. Harry supposed it was because James was almost sixteen at the time and a grown man in Tim's eyes. Showing a patience Harry would never had credited, James had made it his goal to win Tim over. All that first summer, James had taken it on himself to help out with Tim's physical therapy, under the guise of teaching him to play Quidditch. He went to every one of Tim's visits with the healer as well, claiming that since Harry was laid up that he should go with Ginny and Tim to help his mother out.

All the children were very close, but evidently, James had gotten Harry's "saving people thing" in spades.

Harry shook his head to clear it, took a deep breath bringing himself back to the matter at hand. "You'll probably hear all kinds of odd things about me, if you haven't already," he told the boy quietly.

Tim nodded, "I heard...some things." He was quiet for a moment. "Mostly, just what I told you,"

Harry heard the qualifier mostly; no doubt he knew a bit more than that, but he was uneasy about letting Harry know how much he knew. Tim was cagey that way.

"Well, you know the bare bones of the story, then," Harry told him. "Just remember that there's a lot that people say about me that makes me out more powerful than I am."

Harry led Tim by the hand through Godric's Hollow, until they came to the ruined cottage that still stood there. A gasp announced the exact second when Tim was able to see the monument.

"That's where my parents were killed," Harry told the child softly. The remains of the cottage still stood. The plaque and the graffiti that covered it were carefully preserved as well.

Tim traced the words on the plaque with his fingers. "Why didn't he kill you?"

Harry shrugged, still staring at the house. "My mother took the curse that was supposed to kill me. It made the curse go wrong and it rebounded on him. Honestly, it had very little to do with me. It was all my mum. It meant that he couldn't even touch me. That's why they sent me to live with my aunt and uncle...because my aunt was my mum's last living relative...And my mother's blood protected me."

The two of them stood silently, staring at the house for a few more minutes. Harry wondered if it was too much for Tim to understand. He wasn't even sure what he was hoping to accomplish, other than to put the child straight about whatever mad stories he'd hear at school about "Famous Harry Potter." He hadn't planned this, but since Tim was asking about Harry's parents, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Harry remembered the hurt he'd felt when he'd discovered that Ariana Dumbledore was laid to rest in Godric's Hollow-that Dumbledore had never thought to bring him here to visit his parents’ graves. He remembered thinking how he would have found comfort in knowing that someone understood his loss.

"Dad?" Tim asked hesitantly, although the look he fixed Harry with was sharp. "You always say that my Muggle mum was trying to keep me safe. Do you really believe that?"

Harry met the child's blue eyes steadily. "Yeah, I do." Mary had been many things, including an addict and a petty thief, but Harry truly did believe that in her own way, Mary tried to protect the child. Half mad from the curses that bastard Smith kept throwing around, she had still done her best to shield the boy from the worst of the damage. This was the only reason Harry could think of that Tim was even alive, given the stories that the boy had told in the safety of Phoebe's office. "I think that's why she took you to your nana's in the first place."

After investigating Tim's file, it had become clear that Agnes Dawson was Mary Dawson's grandmother-she had raised the girl after the death of her own mother. Harry wondered if Mary had originally thought that she could leave Tim with the old woman for good, getting him away from Smith. When the child was finally placed with a wizard family, Mary had done what she could to make it difficult for Smith to find the boy.

"Hagrid told me you didn't know you were a wizard until he came to bring you your letter."

Harry smiled; Hagrid had told all his children that story as soon as they got to Hogwarts, "That's right," he replied. "My uncle wouldn't let me have my letter. Went clear across the country to avoid it."

"Why?" asked Tim, still pinning Harry with that sharp look.

"They hated magic," Harry replied simply. "They thought they could beat it out of me, I think."

Tim took a deep breath, as he often did before he divulged one of his closely held secrets. "I always hid my magic from Smith." He turned away from Harry to look at the ruins of the cottage.

When it was clear that the boy wasn't going to go on, Harry said, "That was clever of you." It was bloody difficult for a child that young to contain his magic, and Tim had such damage from his father's curses that it was astonishing that Tim had never spontaneously combusted, but Harry left that bit out. "How did you do that?"

Nervously, Tim shifted from foot to foot. "The Dark Man told me how to do it. He said that if Smith found out I had magic, he'd take me away." Tim's breathing sped up and he hunched his shoulders with his hands in his pockets, unconsciously trying to make himself a smaller target. "It never lasted long, but Smith never stayed that long."

Very gently, Harry put his arm around the child, reflecting that it showed how far the child had come in four years when he leaned trustingly into Harry's side.

Tim had spoken of the Dark Man before this. When he was younger, he'd referred to the Dark Man as an angel.

Ginny had been nervous about the idea when Tim had described how the Dark Man would occasionally just take over.

Phoebe had run a few tests and then assured the Potters that what Tim was describing was merely a defense mechanism: the invention of an imaginative child. The mind healer had explained to Harry and Ginny that the Dark Man was what she called an "internal self helper": a way for the child to cope with experiences that were just plainly too horrifying for the child to handle. If Tim couldn't remember what had happened when the Dark Man took over, it was because Tim had just blocked it out.

Harry had discovered, through his many conversations with Dudley in the last few years, just how many things he himself had blocked out. If he'd been a more imaginative child, he could have seen himself creating a protector. But the Dursleys had not only disliked magic, but any show of imagination. Dudley recounted how he and Harry had never been allowed any pretend play that hinted at the fantastic. How apparently Dudley used to borrow a friend's comic books at school and how that same friend had gotten him a copy of the The Lord of The Rings for Christmas one year and Vernon had ridiculed the gift (and the friend) until Dudley had thrown it away. The man had said that Dudley didn't like reading and a book was a rubbish Christmas gift. The next term, Dudley had a falling out with the friend and they never spoke again.

It was no wonder that Harry had spent his childhood with the assumption that Dudley was a bit thick, given how much effort Vernon and Petunia put into making Dudley believe that he was.

Tim, on the other hand, already lived and breathed the fantastic before he entered the Wizarding world. Almost nothing surprised him about magic, because it seemed he'd read every tale the Muggle world had to offer that held wizards or witches. It was not that strange that he'd create a wizard in his mind to protect himself.

Although every time the child talked about his Dark Man, Harry always got the mental image of Severus Snape, standing there sneering.

Tim spoke again into the silence. "Smith used to...do all sorts of things to get me to show some magic."

Harry swallowed. "Yeah?" The hair on back of his neck went up at that simple statement. Unfortunately, it was all too common for Wizarding families to abuse children in order to get them to show their magic. Harry's mind went back to Neville's stories of being dangled out of windows.

Neville's uncle never used an Unforgivable, however.

A full body shudder passed through the boy. Harry hugged him a little tighter.

"This is where you come on Christmas Eve, isn't it?" Tim asked suddenly.

Harry was surprised that Tim guessed that. It was a solitary thing that he'd done almost every year. Once or twice Ginny had come with him, but mostly he came on his own. No matter how busy he was, he always made time to stop to bring flowers to his parents’ graves on Christmas. "Yeah." Harry paused, thinking it over. "There's one other place I go, too. It's not quite Christmas Eve, but that doesn't matter. Shall we stop there before we go home? We'll get some lunch, too."

The child looked up at him, nodded.

Harry took a quick glance around. They were still alone in the snowy silent street. He bent over and picked the boy up, holding tight while they Apparated.