Harry was roused by his mum shaking him gently, half-an-hour later. 

“Wake up, Harry,” she said. When he squirmed himself up into a sitting position, she handed him his glasses. “Everyone’ll be arriving, soon.”

“Everyone?” Harry asked, muzzily.

“We’re moving up Christmas,” Lily told him. “Your dad is floo-calling— well, lots of people. There’s a good four hours of celebration we want to get through.”

Were they not going to talk about what Snape had said? Why had they decided to have— what, a party?

“Huh?” Harry said, standing up. 

“Severus will arrive around midnight,” she said. “We’ll talk more about the situation then, Harry, but we wanted you to have a Christmas with us.” 

Harry was guided down the staircase by her warm hand on his back.

Downstairs, James was using his wand to hoist fairy lights all over the living room. 

“Sleep well, Harry?” he asked, flicking his wand so that the string of lights secured itself to the curtain rod.

“Erm,” Harry said. Questions were bubbling around inside his head, but he didn’t really have the words to express them properly. “I don’t get it. We’re having a party?”

James gave his wand one last flourish, then slipped it into his pocket and turned to face Harry, face serious. 

“Yes, we’re having a party,” he said. “Well, a Christmas gathering. I know this might seem a bit out-of-place, Harry, but your mother and I have thought this through. You haven’t had a Christmas with us, have you?”

Harry shook his head. “Well, no, but—”

“Then you should have as much of one as we can manage before you have to go,” his father said. “Wasn’t that what you were thinking, before? I’m sure it was. C’mere.”

He hugged Harry, ruffling his hair. 

Harry had wanted it all to just keep going, before, hadn’t he? But if they were moving everything forward, then his mum and dad must think they’d have to send him back…

“I do want a Christmas with you,” Harry spoke into his dad’s chest. “But I was already having one, wasn’t I? You’re just going to send me back, with him. ”

James said nothing. 

“Aren’t you?” Harry said, suddenly angry. “You are! But I’m not leaving you— I can’t. I won’t !”

“Harry—”

“I can’t just leave you behind!” Harry shouted, hands balled into fists. He was entirely awake now, thrumming with emotions and energies he could not name. 

He pulled away from his dad, unable to bear the comforting touch anymore. 

“It’s not—”

“Shut up!” Harry yelled. And then, unable to bear it any longer, he ran out of the room, back up the stairs, back into his room, and slammed the door.

The quidditch posters on the wall stared him down, a reminder that this wasn’t really his room. Harry reached up and tore one down. He stared at it in his hands then ripped it in half, beheading Josef Wronski.

Immediately after he had done that, he wished he hadn’t. Wronski was staring at him dolefully, and the Montrose Magpies eyed him balefully from their own poster. Harry crumpled up the torn paper and dropped it to the floor. 

He couldn’t stay in this room– it was a lie, such a lie, and what had made him exceedingly happy only a day or two ago now reminded him that none of it really was his– they wouldn’t let it be his.

His father found him in the tiny study ten minutes later. Harry was drawing circles on the floor with a finger, watching the individual strands of the carpet move under his touch.

“I’m sorry,” James said. He squished himself next to the desk, sitting down beside Harry. “I didn’t handle that well.”

Harry didn’t say anything, but the next circle went widdershins instead of clockwise.

“You couldn’t know,” James went on softly, “But my father died when I was fifteen.”

Harry hadn’t known– and– 

He whipped his head up and glared at his Dad. “But Mum said we were going to have Christmas with your parents,” he said accusingly.

“My mum and my step-father,” James said. “She married Nicodemus a few weeks after I turned twenty. He’s a nice bloke, and they love each other. But— well— I wanted you to know.”

Harry dropped his eyes to the carpet again, and began a spiralling pattern.

“It was dragon-pox,” James said. “If you’re young when you get it, then you get over it quickly. But my father wasn’t young– he and your Gran were quite old when they had me. There were complications, and it killed him.  And for ages afterward, I was hurting so much that I just wanted to make other people hurt too.”

His finger pausing in its pattern, Harry doubted that his father could feel so cruel.

“But my mum told me something that stopped that. She said, ‘Just because he is gone now, doesn’t mean he was never there.’ I told her that she was being stupid, of course I knew that.” He gave a little scoff. “I didn’t, really. I was so focussed on what my Dad would miss out on that I didn’t care about all the times he had been there. 

“From what Severus said about the mirror, none of this could have happened if we hadn’t been there, in your heart– if your subconscious memories hadn’t been buried at the bottom of your brain. We were still with you, Harry. We still will be with you. And now you’ll be able to remember us, here and now.” James reached out a cautious hand and rested it on Harry’s shoulder; Harry didn’t shrug it off.

“It’ll hurt,” James said, his voice choking a little. Harry shifted, turning to look at him, and noticed a tear rolling its way slowly down his Dad’s cheek. “Of course it will hurt. You’ll probably hate us, for a bit, and I wouldn’t blame you for that. But Harry, we couldn’t let you stay. Not knowing what would happen to you in the real world.”

“But,” Harry said quietly. “This is real, too. You’re real.” Then, a panic threading under his voice, “No— don’t cry—”

For his father truly was crying, now. It was a noiseless sorrow that cut deep slashes into Harry, making him feel smaller than usual.

James reached over, and traced Harry’s face with a gentle hand.

“I know this is no consolation,” he said. “But we love you so, so much. And that is why we cannot allow you to stay. You see that, don’t you, Harry?”

There was a hollowness in Harry’s stomach now, and he wished he could cry, for he felt in need of it. But all his tears had been used already that day.

“I think I do,” he said, hesitantly. It had been the way that his father had looked at him– like Harry was the bright-burning filament in the stars and the sun, mysterious and beautiful and wonderful–

Harry knew what it was like to feel that way about someone– he’d known ever since he stepped foot off the Hogwarts Express and seen them–

He would have done anything to save them, to know them and to uncover more of who they really were.... The way Lily Potter left bookmarks all over the cottage so that she wouldn’t find herself without one in the middle of a book; the way that James Potter tilted his head up when he sang…

It was knowing this that lead to the unwanted knowledge inside him that if he did love them, he would have to let them save him. This small maturity was sat in his stomach, cold and lumpen, like ill-cooked porridge.

A little later, there was a soft tap on the door, and Harry’s mum came in, holding something that was wrapped in brown paper. The study was small enough that with Harry and James sitting on the ground, there wasn’t much room left, but James shifted over, then Harry did too. She squeezed herself next to them, knees at her chest to take up less room.

It was a bit like a hug, Harry thought, sitting so close together.

Once Lily had folded herself into her position, the package was handed to Harry. The brown paper was tied with a gold ribbon. 

“This is for you, Harry,” she said. “I don’t— well— we want you to open it. It’s from both of us.” 

A glimpse of colour, then Harry unfolded the rest of the paper and found a multicoloured knitted scarf, clearly homemade.

“We made it together,” his mum said. “After you left on the train at the start of the year, I needed to do something with my hands. So I started this.”

Harry lifted it up and held it against his cheek. It was very soft.

“I did tell her you’d be a Gryffindor, but your mum insisted we didn’t know for sure, so she put in all the house colours,” James told him. 

Lily gave his dad a little shove.

“Harry would have done well in any house,” she said. “And it could never be mistaken for anyone else’s, either, could it?”

It could not. The first quarter of it was in thin stripes, alternating the different house colours—red and green and blue and yellow— then the rest was red and gold.

“I did that section,” James said, pointing at part of the scarf where the red wool looked particularly snarled. “Isn’t it great? But I think I’m more of an embroiderer.”

“I love it,” Harry said, honestly. This was the first present he’d ever gotten from his parents, and they’d made it themselves. He tangled his fingers in the bright wool. “Thank you.” He wound it round his neck, and once it was on his mum tugged it a little to adjust it. 

“There,” she said. 

Then they all walked downstairs together.