Somehow, the fairy lights glimmering round the front room made everything feel warmer and cosier. The curtains were drawn, and the fire on the hearth crackled cheerfully, flickering light on James’ face as he used the poker to shift a large log into a better position.

“I’d step back if I were you,” Lily told him. 

Harry’s dad glanced at his watch, and after leaning the poker against the wall did as she said, helping her move an armchair closer to the side of the room.

When the fire flared green, Harry saw it out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head round to look at it. 

“Wha—”

And then there were people stepping out of the fireplace.

“Floo powder, love,” his mum said absently. She was moving a pile of paperback books off the coffee table. “Lets you travel through the fireplace.” Pulling her wand out, she waved it and sent the books flying through the air out of the room. “Come over here and meet some people. Hey! Remus!”

A mild-looking, brown-haired man walked over, smiling. “Hi Lily, Harry,” he said. “How was school? You can lie to Sirius if he asks if you used those fireworks, you know— 

“Harry’d never lie to me!” A dark-haired man turned around, then strode over and rested his head on top of Harry’s, hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Would you, kid? I bet those fireworks were great.”

“Err,” Harry said uncomfortably. The man’s actions were that of someone very familiar and close with him, but Harry had never met him in his life. “Um—”

Would it be weird if he told this Sirius person to get off him? He should, shouldn’t he?

But then Remus took care of it for him. 

“Get off him, you idiot,” he said, pushing at Sirius. “He’s obviously uncomfortable. Don’t you remember what James said about him getting hit by some kind of amnesia charm?”

“Oh,” the man said, moving away. Then, affably, “But how could you forget me, Harry? I, Sirius Black, am your godfather— and unforgettable!”

“Sometimes I do try very hard to forget you, Black,” called out a woman. She’d been speaking with Harry’s dad on the other side of the room. “But I can’t seem to scrub the image of you streaking down the Gryffindor stairs when you were thirteen.”

“Shut it, Alice,” Sirius yelled back. But he was grinning, a wide, open grin that made his eyes sparkle and dance. Harry decided then that he liked him, even if he didn’t remember him at all. 

Although at first it had seemed like a lot of people in the room to Harry, after an hour or two that was no longer the case. Somehow, in that short period of time, he’d gotten to know several of these people— his parent’s friends— very well. 

There was Remus, who asked lots of questions about Hogwarts and told them all a funny story about his encounter with a grindylow; Sirius, physically affectionate with everyone and laughing a lot; Alice, a smile always on her lips, who had told them her husband was staying with a flu-y Neville... Quiet Hestia seemed to have been brought along by her partner, the bubbly Marlene; quick-tongued Dorcas enchanted baubles to follow around Caradoc, who performed muggle magic tricks complete with flourishes and bad acting.

Someone had set up a record-player in the corner an hour or so in, and there was dancing— Harry was swirled around by Sirius, dipped by Marlene, and (embarrassingly) found himself demonstrating the hokey-pokey for a confused but rather delighted Caradoc. He sat by the fire with Alice when a slower song started, to watch his parents sway in slow-dance together and listen absently to her story. She was telling him in a confidential tone about the joke Christmas present she’d bought for  Sirius— “Last year he gave us an inflatable unicorn—” when Marlene danced with Hestia in front of them, gently dipping her, blocking Harry’s view of James and Lily. 

Marlene and Hestia moved away, swaying to the soft music, then Harry heard no more of what Alice was saying. Now he could see his parents gently kissing— then they parted, and there was a thin trail running down Lily’s face. She turned, and the tear-track glimmered silver when it caught the light.

“Oh,” Alice said softly. She stood up, and took Harry’s hand in hers, walking him over to his mum. “Lily, are you alright?”

Lily smiled a terrible smile. It was joyous and sad and wearied and peaceful, all at the same time. 

“Yes,” she said. “It’s only that it’s Christmas. And Harry is here, and James, and you, and everyone else— and there is almost too much love in me, Alice. I’m overfull with it. That’s all.”

There was a hug, then, and Harry found himself in between Alice and Lily, a little squished. It was kind of nice, though.

Caradoc left at eleven, Dorcas a few minutes later; Marlene and Hestia spun away in green flames at quarter past.

“Spose I’d better get this one back,” Sirius said, nodding at Remus. The other man was asleep on the couch, head resting tilted against the back of the seat. “C’mon, you.” 

He hauled Remus up into an upright position— Remus murmured a little and his eyelids fluttered— then staggered off towards the fireplace. 

“Still up?” Alice asked Harry amusedly.

The potion that his father had given Harry earlier meant that he was still wide awake, though it was a little after half-past eleven at this point. 

“I feel like I could stay up til morning,” he admitted. When he saw Alice’s shocked face, he added quickly, “I had a long nap this afternoon.”

That was pretty much true.

“Well, I hope all you kids aren’t usually up at the wee hours of the morning at Hogwarts,” Alice said, smiling. “Poor Neville— I thought it was because of his flu that he was sleeping so much— but maybe he’s just making up for never having slept at school.”

She stood up and walked over to the gramophone in the corner.  “Remus would be embarrassed to be outlasted by an eleven-year-old, if it wasn’t Remus.” The music— a soft and rather scratchy rendition of Celestina Warbeck’s Twenty-eight enchanted candles— stopped when she lifted the stylus off.

Harry’s dad laughed. “Remus never gets embarrassed— I think he’s actually incapable of it.”

Rolling her eyes, Lily said, “I think he does a bit, whenever he gets complimented— but he’s good at hiding it. Never gets all blustery like Sirius does.”

Alice picked up the record with nimble fingers and slid it back in its case. “I’ll just take this back—”

“Oh, is that yours,” Harry’s dad said. “I didn’t think we’d gotten any Warbeck—”

“Yes, it’s mine,” Alice replied tartly. “Well— Frank’s. But he’s not here to take it back, is he? He reminded me about it before I left, said, gee, Alice, get that Celestina record back from James— I lent it to him months ago and I think he’s forgotten it wasn’t his. ”

James made a face. “Well, tell Frank that—”

“Yes, yes,” Alice said, waving a hand in dismissal. “I’ll make something up, don’t bother. I should probably be off, too.”

“Bye, Alice,” Lily said. “And thank you.”

“Goodbye,” Harry said.

 “You make sure to have a lovely Christmas, Harry. And don’t let James eat all the pudding,” Alice said, taking a pinch of glittery green powder. But before she could throw it on the flames they heard the knock at the door.

“Bit late for visitors, isn’t is?” Alice remarked. 

While Lily went to answer the door, and James said something about the caller being expected, it was an issue of magical ritual timing, you know, Harry’s stomach felt like a large stone had dropped into it. 

It wasn’t as if he’d been able to forget, not really, but hearing Snape’s knock jarred him. A glance at the clock showed that it was quarter to twelve: Harry could almost feel the minutes and seconds falling through his fingers like fine-grain sand.

When Snape and Lily came into the room, there was an odd silence. Snape was looking at Alice, and though Harry wasn’t quite sure what it was, there was something about it that suggested it wasn’t an ordinary kind of looking. Harry would remember this moment years later, and think with a rush of sorrow and understanding, of course. But then Snape closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again his face was aloof and blank.

Alice was looking at him too, curiously, then shrugged, throwing in the floo powder. It was clear that she’d decided what he was doing there was none of her business. 

“Well, I’d best go home to Neville and Fred,” she said. “Goodbye, everyone. And Merry Christmas.”

She stepped into the fireplace and was gone as the flames flashed viridian.

“Home to Neville,” Snape said, seemingly to himself. The fire was returning to a more usual colour now. “Yes, she’d best be home to Neville.”

And after a few minutes of quiet, serious talking, they knew that it was time for Harry to be home, too. Not home in this cottage, with its cheery warmth— but home to the real world of the Christmas holidays at Hogwarts, because of the lonely truth that Harry’s parents had been dead for years.

In the end, as Lily said, it came down to trust. 

Harry’s parents trusted Snape when he told them Harry had been enchanted by the Mirror of Erised… they trusted him when he said that their world was created using Harry’s dormant memories from when he was only a baby, and that they had been murdered by Voldemort in the Autumn of 1981. Harry didn’t like Snape, not really— but his parents trusted him, and Harry trusted his parents with a conviction so strong it burned.

Harry trusted Ron; he knew Ron’s way of writing, and knew that Ron was the one who had written the letter to him. Harry trusted Ron, and he knew that Ron was telling the truth when he wrote that Harry was looking less alive every day, wasting away in front of the mirror. Ron would never lie to Harry about that.

Lily and James trusted Harry— they had faith in him, and believed he was telling the truth when he admitted he’d lived years and years knowing them to be dead.

And Harry— most awfully— Harry trusted himself. It left him with a hollow, sick feeling in his chest, but Harry trusted himself enough to know that something clearly was wrong with the fortuitous and miraculous resurrection of his long-dead parents. He wasn’t quite able to deceive himself into believing that everything was fine, and that Snape and Ron’s letter were just hoaxes, and that Harry could just keep on living with his mum and dad and everything would be fine… much as he would have liked to.

So Harry looked at his parents, fixing them in his memory: the way the firelight played off their skin, the curl of Lily’s hair and the sheer wildness of his dad’s… how they seemed just absolutely right, here in their cottage in Godric’s Hollow. He tangled his fingers in the soft, warm wool of the scarf they’d given him, reassurance of the strength of their love.

They would be leaving soon, he knew. But this moment— listening to the soft crackle of the dying fire and just being able to see his parents live and well—right now, it was perfect.