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The Seventh Year Gryffindors are enjoying a harmonious evening of essay-writing, reading, and academic despair in their famously reserved spot by the Common Room fire when the pitter patter of far smaller feet rounds the corner of the large crimson sofa.
Lily Evans, Head Girl and well known doter on sweet First Years, turns her attention to the mop of dark hair that comes to a stop by the sofa’s armrest.
Opening her mouth to ask if she can do anything for the young boy, he lets out a little squeak of a greeting to the older boy sitting across from her.
“Hi Mr Potter!”
James promptly chokes on the pumpkin juice he’d nicked from the Kitchens.
Excuse me he coughs out and before the First Year has time to feel even the beginnings of a fear that he has offended his elder, James grins widely and says, ‘Mr Potter is my Dad and far too respectable a name for the likes of me by far. You can call me James.’
“Oh,” the kid replies simply, “Really?”. A toothy grin.
“Really, mate. Hardly fair if I call you Harry and you call me Mr. Potter.”
The sound of his own name being uttered by the James Potter–Head Boy, Hogwarts Quidditch Legend, Marauder–visibly floors little Harry and Lily has to bite her cheek to stop herself from smiling.
“How do you know my name?” The question is posed with no attempt to disguise the wonder that coats his voice.
Lily’s heart flutters as she watches James smile unbearably kindly at Harry. “You’re in my house! What kind of Gryffindor Head Boy do you take me for?”
Harry laughs and James looks delighted at the sound. Their friends spare a quick smile towards the unlikely duo, but promptly return to their work. Lily tries to follow suit, she really does, but finds her eyes and ears continually drawn to the conversation taking place across from her.
She watches as James ushers Harry slightly forwards so that he can talk to him properly. “What can I do for you then?”
The First Year’s cheeks flush red before he replies, “I just wanted to say that I thought you were wicked in last week’s match.”
“Oh,” James says, clearly pleasantly surprised that this isn’t winding up to be a Head Boy related chat. “Cheers kid. You a Quidditch fan?”
He nods vigorously.
“Knew you had a sensible look about you! What position do you play?”
“Oh,” he goes an even brighter shade of red, “No I – I’ve never played – I’m Muggleborn,” the last admission is a quieter, “But it looks amazing and I think I’d love it and I’ve been alright in our flying lessons so far this year…”
He trails off, eyes darting every which way in an unreserved display of nerves.
“Well,” Lily recognises the gentle tone of James’s voice and pointedly ignores how it breeds warmth in her chest, “I’ll have to ask Hooch about the top First Year fliers, get her professional opinion about you. Flying lessons were my favourite part of being a Firstie. Absolute rubbish that they don’t continue after that.”
Harry visibly relaxes as he agrees emphatically and it twinges Lily’s heart that he’s already learned that being a Muggleborn necessitates caution.
“You know,” James starts, “I’ve been thinking recently that there isn’t enough Quidditch in my life. Would you want to have a go at a game some time?”
Harry stands there, agape. Lily quite sympathises. Even in the inherent knowledge she carries, and she does so in her very bones, of James’s boundless desire to help other people, she never expected that to leave his mouth.
She was with him yesterday, after all, when he got back bruised and drenched from practice and swore up and down that he was never stepping foot on the pitch again. And she knows better than anyone, as well, how he barely manages to fit three meals a day into his schedule, nevermind additional activities with First Years he doesn’t know.
“You mean… play Quidditch… with you?”
“Yeah, what do you say?” The casual tone of his question is so at odds with Harry’s total incredulity it’s almost laughable. Or it would be laughable if Lily herself wasn’t also battling with a surge of strong emotion within her.
"I mean – yeah – bloody hell, YES!"
James snorts at the same time that Mallory Dimsdale, a grade-obsessed Sixth Year constantly on the brink of an academia-related breakdown, whips her head up sharply from her loveseat parked next to them in the Common Room. He raises a hand to her in apology. Unsurprisingly, that does nothing to pacify her and Lily suppresses a giggle when James’ placation only makes Dimsdale, outspoken owner of a grudge against the Marauders since a prank-gone-wrong ruined her Defence project in Second Year, sour further.
“Sorry – I – sorry," Harry is whispering now, "But yeah! I mean – seriously?”
James’ shoulders are shaking with barely contained mirth as he grins at his companion fondly. “Yes Harry, I’m serious. It’ll be a laugh. Maybe I can get a group together, we can all have a fly around. What you doing this weekend?”’
“Nothing,” Harry says immediately.
“Great.” He clasps the younger boy on the shoulder and Harry, if possible, looks even more delighted at the contact. He looks at James like Lily sometimes thinks she might be looking at him, in utter, spellbounded adoration.
“I’ll need to check with Hooch about when the pitch is free, but I’ll let you know okay? Bring your mates if they’re keen. I’ll bring some too.”
“I will, I will.” Harry is practically springing on the balls of his feet, “Thanks Mr – thanks James. This is – this is going to be sick.”
James laughs, and replies, genuine, “I can’t wait.”
Harry beams at him and scurries off, day clearly having been made.
The Seventh Years only have to wait thirty seconds before a chorus of excited cries ring through the Common Room from where Harry’s group of friends are sat.
James goes back to his Transfiguration extra credit with a smile on his lips and Lily allows herself one more moment of looking at him (utter, spellbounded adoration is right) before she returns back to her History of Magic essay, cheeks also aching under the persistent hands of her own smile.
In true James Potter fashion, he takes his promise to extra heights.
By the end of the week there are notices up in all Common Rooms and outside the Great Hall, the doors to all Quidditch changing rooms as well as with every Head of House.
QUIDDITCH FUN DAY
Tired of spending weekends with your same boring dorm mates? Sick of being indoors in this unseasonably warm Scottish March? Looking for an excuse to put off that Potions essay?
We present Quidditch Fun Day. ALL abilities welcome, beginners ENCOURAGED.
Brought to you by Hogwarts’ most successful Team Captain.
The Pitch, Saturday 2-5pm.
Bring your own broom if you can.
The way the entire school is buzzing with the news, you’d think some unbelievably salacious scandal has occurred. But bar from someone crossing out ‘successful’ with ‘SEXY’ on one of the posters outside the Great Hall (the resulting grammar shocking, but the sentiment more than true) Lily thinks it may be one of the most wholesome pieces of school gossip she’s ever heard.
She spends a stupid amount of time reading and rereading the copy she requested off McGonagall on Thursday evening when she’s curled up in her four poster. Enjoying the time she wastes thinking about how James turned a friendly suggestion, made to help out and please one First Year, into a project that is inspiring excitement and joy throughout the entire school.
That warmth in her chest rushes heartily again as she pictures his pleased little smirk when he drafted the tongue-in-cheek poster and how it only grew once he spied the "successful" to "sexy" edit. If Lily had to guess who had done it, she’d bet it was either one of the Hufflepuff Fourth Years who followed him, giggling, around Honeydukes last Hogsmeade or Sirius. 50/50 odds.
Marlene asks her to please come along when she slides next to her on the Gryffindor bench at breakfast Friday morning.
“James is weirdly keen to take all the beginners,” she says as she makes herself a sausage and hash brown butty, “So it’ll be pretty calm for me to lead a few drills and games with more experienced players but it’d be nice to have you there. Mare and Dory have flat out refused.”
She pouts dramatically at Lily, “You’re my only hope!”
The redhead makes a show of mulling it over when, really, an Entrance Hall full of Cornish Pixies couldn’t stop her from heading down to the pitch come Saturday afternoon.
Firstly, she’s an excellent Head Girl who shows up to school spirited events and supports the Head Boy. Secondly, James had asked her earlier in the week (adorably shyly) if she might want to come and she’d said yes without even feigning a thinking period. Thirdly, she is objectively shit at flying and has always wanted to improve.
Oh, and of course, she, like any Hogwarts student with eyes and an attraction to the male sex, can’t resist seeing James Potter in Quidditch robes.
“Yeah, alright. Why not?”
Marlene looks far too knowing at the nonchalance with which Lily delivers her answer, but is pleased nonetheless, wisely choosing, therefore, not to comment, simply giving her best friend a smooch on the cheek in thanks before biting into her sandwich.
Saturday dawns bright and beautiful and there’s an extra tang of anticipation in the air, palpable in the humdrum of noise sounding through the Great Hall, buzzing bee-like from one conversation to another, the Ravenclaw through to the Slytherin House Table.
Peter, Remus and Sirius wolf whistle when James tumbles in for lunch with Mary at his side, the two of them having come back from working on their Potions project down in the dungeons.
“Well if it isn’t Hogwarts’ sexiest Team Captain,” Sirius barks. The mystery of the poster vandal solved, then.
James turns and bends slightly to give the boys a view of his bum that Lily thinks she may as well appreciate without embarrassment as it’s being handed to her field of vision so willingly.
Dorcas rolls her eyes, face directly next to his arse, before giving it a light slap and telling James to sit down before the boys get too excited.
It’s too late for that, Lily thinks, they’ve already started a chain of howling that is currently being taken up enthusiastically by some Ravenclaw Sixth Years.
James waves appreciatively before patting Dorcas on the head and plopping down on the bench next to her.
Lunch passes in its usual fashion, the boys leave early to help James prepare things on the pitch and Marlene splashes a dollop of suspiciously amber liquid into her and Lily’s pumpkin juices, winking before she finishes her cup.
Lily spares a quick glance to the staff table before she grins at her friend and downs her own drink.
James is already flying with Harry when the girls get to the pitch.
“Nice of you to join us, Head Girl and Vice Captain!” he yells from 20 feet in the air.
Marlene flips her middle finger at him which Lily hurriedly pushes away hissing that there are First Years here.
There aren’t just First Years though, pockets of people from all seven years, from all four houses, dot the pitch. And the resulting picture of such a sunny, carefree Saturday is heartwarming enough to bring a smile to even Marlene’s face, though she continues to roll her eyes at Lily because for Merlin’s sake Lil even First Years know what the f-word is.
James instructs people to split into groups – beginners, intermediates and advanced.
“Just be honest about it. It’ll be better fun for everyone if we’re all in the right groups.
“I’ll be taking beginners,” James pauses to grin when Harry whoops, “Cheng is taking intermediates and McKinnon the advanced group.”
A flurry of noise catches his attention.
“Alright over there, Kunar?” James smirks at Nishk Kunar and his group of Ravenclaw Sixth Years pals who have all just been caught red handed displaying excitement at the prospect of showing off their Quidditch skills to the Gryffindor Vice Captain, whose force both on and off the Pitch has had a good percentage of the Hogwarts population bewitched for years now.
Lily and Marlene try (but not that hard) to cover up their giggles as the group of boys flush and splutter incoherently.
Sirius does them no such favour, guffawing loudly until Remus, also in all fairness grinning, cuffs him lightly on the head.
James continues sorting out logistics, where the groups will fly, who gets which chest of playing balls, ground rules, and so on.
He toes the line between authoritative and down to earth so well Lily can’t help but think he probably invented it.
It’s mildly torturous, how attractive she finds this particular version of him. Not that she’d ever turn her nose up at James Potter whatever role he adopted, but this James, the natural leader who can tell people what to do and make them grateful to receive instruction, who can disguise orders as jokes, who leads so effortlessly from within his own ranks, this James she absolutely drools over.
Dumbledore’s decision to appoint him Head Boy this year has been terrible for Lily’s heart – or wonderful – either way the hunk of muscle has never beaten so fast so frequently.
She shuffles quietly over to the beginners group, trying to remain inconspicuous but, of course, James is having none of it.
Head Girl! The Head Girl is joining us! As if he himself is not equivalent in status. She tells him to shut up or she’ll leave and it only thrills him further. There is nothing James loves more, she knows, than receiving the banter she throws at him. He comes alive in no other way she’s ever seen when he's under her attention. Pleasant sensations dance through her chest as she watches him battle to temper his grin, trying his best to lead the group into some semblance of an ordered Quidditch session.
And of course, it’s a rousing success.
The drills are suitable for their skill level, useful for those genuinely trying to improve, but they’re also fun.
James completely mixes the year groups but ensures no one is left without a mate who can’t handle it, so Lily ends up in a relay group with two Hufflepuff Fourth Years and Harry when they do a Quidditch version of suicide lines.
Lily can barely breathe for laughing when she accidentally spins 360 degrees around on her broom when she was just trying to turn back to high five Harry so that he could fly to the next line.
James is at her side in an instant, concern drawing his eyebrows together for a mere moment before he too is laughing.
Lily’s adrenaline fuelled heartbeat stills entirely for a few seconds when he tucks a lock of her hair, fallen forward with the force of her mirth, back behind her ear, smiling down softly at her once they’ve both flown back to the group.
In the meantime, Harry flies to the next line and back perfectly and Lily mourns the loss of James’ touch just briefly before that persistent warmth inside her swells once more as she watches her Head Boy fly forward and grab Harry clean off his own broom to wrestle him.
People come and go, either returning to the castle or heading elsewhere with their friends or simply lounging for a relaxing lie down on the grass below the flying shapes.
Lily is lying in companionable silence, with her hand flung across her eyes, next to Sirius. She tracks James exclusively, watching him lead an ever decreasing group until it is just him and Harry flying and catching and tumbling and laughing.
She admires his skill, she admires his body when he draws nearer, but mostly she admires how he treats Harry – with so much patience and so much care.
And she feels her insides glow at his happiness, palpable from her spot on the grass below.
There is so much, too much, that threatens it and there is nothing more that Lily wishes she could guarantee.
James Potter’s happiness is what she wants from this life. And it is so heart wrenchingly wonderful to see it in full bloom on this ordinary Saturday.
"That was amazing! Quidditch is amazing. Is the pitch free tomorrow?" Harry is tripping over his own sentences when he and James eventually come back down to land.
James throws his head back with laughter and slings his arm around the younger boy.
“I think I need at least one day’s rest after chasing you around all day on my broom.”
Harry is apparently too happy to be disappointed.
“But we’ll definitely do it again,” James adds. “And soon.”
Harry throws his arms around James’ middle and James stops to return the embrace, patting Harry’s mop of hair, not dissimilar to his own, gently as he chuckles.
When Harry interrupts his friends’ game of Gobstones to leave, the boy yells a goodbye to James. Lily hears one of the girls whisper, how do you know the Head Boy, and Harry just shrugs, casual as ever, “He’s my mate.”
James is grinning as he starts to pack away.
Lily gets to her feet to help him.
He smiles at her as she approaches his side, handing her a quaffle for her to place into the chest of them next to where she’s come to stand.
She smiles, something small and sweet, back at him.
“We’ll just leave the two of you to it then shall we?” Peter asks, shooting a smirk to the rest of the group who have gathered where Lily left Sirius.
The two of them are far too used to such comments and such looks from their set of mates to be bothered by either anymore.
Honestly, Lily’s just grateful to have James to herself for the first time this weekend so she sends a cheerful thumbs up to all of their grinning faces.
“Message received loud and clear, Evans,” Sirius says as he slings his arms around Marlene and Remus to walk back.
She’s glad, as she watches them walk away, that James didn’t try to usher her back with them.
He would have, earlier this year, when he was desperate to prove that he was capable. She might have let him back then, not because she didn’t want to spend time with him but because the alarming rate with which she was desperate to do so scared her witless.
Now? Now she knows he’s more than able to clear all of this away. He knows she knows that. And they both know they just enjoy being together.
James’ voice pulls her out of her thoughts.
“Today,” he says, “was so great.”
She agrees with him and from there he lets loose every thought skidding through his brain. Clearly there are many of them. Today has touched upon something bigger for him, she realises.
An ocean climbs up her sternum as she listens to him.
“I didn’t realise – I’m still so behind – but Godric I haven’t really ever thought about what Quidditch must be like for Muggleborns. I mean there’s the basic knowledge that they won’t have ever flown, sure, but I’ve never properly thought about how much of a disadvantage that puts them at.”
He looks troubled by this, as if disappointed in himself. You are so wonderful, Lily thinks, the truth of the statement felt so intensely within her that she physically aches. She has to tighten her grip on the quaffle she's holding to stop her hands from reaching out to smooth the crease in his brow.
“Sorry, Evans, you probably think it’s barmy to care. Muggleborns have much more to worry about. I just – there are those big things we can’t control – the war and all that flobberworm shite. But this? This we could actually do something about. We could do this regularly, start a proper club maybe. Even if it makes just one person feel more supported. I don’t know – maybe it’s stupid.”
It’s not stupid. You’re so so wonderful. She can’t speak, her lungs are drowning.
“But the little things count too don’t they? You said that once. You said the school could do so much more to support Muggleborn students, said that you all arrive here and everyone acts as if you start on a level playing field. When that isn't true. It isn't. I think I’m going to talk to Cheng, he’ll take over from me next year. Maybe I can get him to make this an official thing. I could talk to the other Captains as well. But Cheng would be keen I reckon. What do you think?”
He looks at her then, lost as he has been in his own musings. And something of the ocean must show on her face because he steps closer to her.
“Lil?”
With merely her name leaving his lips, the feelings curl like a riptide in Lily’s throat. She can’t hold them back any more than a tide can stop its own ebb and flow. Just as waters are pulled by the gravity of the moon, the setting sun on this Saturday evening is drawing something out of her. Something she is powerless to stop.
She bursts into tears, the salt of the sea leaking out now that the current in her has broken free.
James’ immediate panic is almost comical, no it is comical, and laughter tumbles out amongst the tangles of her profuse sobbing.
He almost trips over the quaffles he dropped the instant she started crying, as if he had forgotten completely that they were there.
“Lil what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” His hands are suddenly everywhere, grasping her shoulders, running down her arms, pushing her hands away to replace them on her face with his own, but instead of covering her eyes as hers had done, his cradle her cheeks.
“It – it’s nothing – really – well no it is something, but it’s nothing bad.”
James raises a skeptical eyebrow even as his thumbs swipe across her cheeks soothingly.
She grasps his wrists to ground herself.
She needs to start making sense because…because she can’t keep this in, this new knowledge, this wonderful feeling.
It feels like her insides have been waiting her entire life to feel this perfectly aligned, and so whole in this way. Like there was something about James, and loving him, because that’s what she’s realised, she loves him, she loves him and something about that knowledge has made her complete.
And she needs to tell him because she’s almost certain that he feels the same, how can one alone feel that the very axis of the Earth has suddenly righted without their companion at the epicentre of this shift feeling it too?
It’s impossible.
At the same time, it’s not an earth shattering realisation in any way. It’s hardly a realisation at all. She’s loved him for so long and even though she wasn't exactly conscious to it she knows she stopped hiding her feelings months ago. He did too, she thinks. They’ve both just been carrying on, in love, but quietly.
He’s still looking her over, trying to find some source of pain, but for all that that particular brand of negative emotion has assaulted her over the course of her difficult life, she knows he’ll find nothing today.
Today, she feels only joy.
“James,” she says, “It’s nothing bad I promise. It’s good. I’ve been a bit slow, should have realised it months ago, lifetimes ago –”
His confusion is plain on his face and at the precipice of her declaration Lily takes a moment to steel herself for the change in his expression. To make sure she is ready to commit to memory the look on his face when she tells him how she feels about him.
“I love you.”
The words are simple and she delivers them with no fanfare. They are simply another fact in the universe now, a steadfast truth that will last the test of time.
His reaction isn’t exactly what she hoped for. She expected surprise, delight, reciprocation and maybe a very thorough snogging. But all she gets is James Potter’s hands dropping from her face as his jaw hits the ground.
“What?”
It’s not enough to make her backtrack because really that would be impossible, but it knocks her a bit.
“I love you,” she repeats, reaching out to gently tug on the jersey across his stomach. “Do you – I mean I thought you might –”
She is cut off by a very warm and welcome pair of lips crashing onto hers.
The kiss is hard, it’s desperate and messy and matches perfectly the fervour with which his hands are moving everywhere on her body.
It is also the best kiss she has ever had, but whether that’s down to the mechanics of it or simply down to the fact that these are James Potter’s lips on hers she can’t know. And she doesn’t care to decipher.
As suddenly as the kiss comes, it goes. And James laughs.
“Evans, you’re proper thick if you can doubt for even a second that I love you back. Because I do, Merlin I do, I –”
This time she cuts him off, throwing her arms around his neck and pushing herself into his personal space so forcefully that he has to lift her up by her waist to stop them both from toppling over.
It’s far longer this time before they break apart.
“Is that how you’ve declared your love to other girls in the past, Potter? By telling them they’re proper thick?”
He scoffs. “As if I’ve ever had the time or inclination to even think twice about another girl.”
He pauses as she giggles, swooping down to give her another kiss, chaste, like he couldn’t stop now that he’d been given a taste. She’s grateful.
“What brought this on?” he asks, forehead pressed against hers, breath that feels like pure oxygen fanning across her face.
She curls her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and feels giddy at the shiver that runs through him.
“I don’t know really,” her breath hitches as another wave of emotion ebbs through her.
He kisses her cheeks softly.
“You’re just – so wonderful – and I’ve known that for such a long time. But – seeing how you’ve been with Harry, hearing you talk about finding a way to make things better here when you’re three months from leaving school forever, when these problems are so not your responsibility…I just – I just love you. I’ve loved you this whole year. Maybe even longer.”
More tears spill.
James curls his arms further around her waist, bringing her into him, settling his face into the crook of her neck as one of his hands twirls a strand of her hair around his finger.
“Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she laughs through a thick voice.
“S’alright. I’ve had more time to come to terms with the fact that I’m in love with you. I did all my crying years ago.”
She laughs. “You prat. You did not.”
He is beaming at her. Dipping again to kiss the tears away from her face, he admits into her skin that no he may not have cried, but it has been years.
“That must have been hard, given, you know –”
“Given you couldn’t stand me for some of those years?”
It doesn’t inspire laughter in her like he clearly thought it would.
He dips again to trace her jaw with his nose, breathing in deeply. Her eyes close.
“I didn’t deserve you back then. I might not now, I might not ever, but I’m not letting you go if you’ll let me have you.”
He pulls away to find her with wet eyes again.
“It would have been okay if you’d never loved me back, you know. Because I still had your friendship, I was still someone that mattered to you. And even when I thought I was just going to – to keep loving you alone, the best thing about my life was still the fact that you were in it.”
“James,” she whispers.
The subsequent kiss they share couldn’t be more different from the previous three. It’s gentle, slow, reverent. She feels the very meaning of love being defined in the movement between their lips and she knows, from that point onwards, that her life is changed forever.
“Are the showers nice in the changing rooms?” she murmurs against his mouth.
It freezes him. He swallows audibly. “Never heard any complaints.”
“Good,” she says, “Want to show me them?”
His hands flex across her hips as she, for the second time this evening, stupefies him.
He pulls back to look at her and she thinks she must glow with the love that she feels for him because she’s never seen him look at her the way he does now – like the world could shrivel to blankness around them and he wouldn’t notice.
“I want that more than I have ever wanted anything in my entire life.”
She laughs again – oh, she can’t wait for a whole life with James that will be filled with laughter – “You’re always so dramat –”
But she shrieks before she can finish the tease as James bends and swings her up over his shoulder.
He spins on his heel and heads towards the aforementioned changing rooms.
“James!” she squeals in between peels of laughter, “The quaffles!”
“Sod the quaffles!”
Knowing his former self would have died before ever uttering such disparaging words about the Chaser’s most beloved companion, Lily giggles into his back and waits with fast-diminishing patience to get back on solid ground so that she can kiss him again…and maybe do some other things too.
She tells him as much and he groans, fuck are you trying to kill me Evans, before letting her down outside the Gryffindor changing rooms to press another searing kiss to her lips.
Just before they go in, face buried deep in her auburn waterfall of hair, James whispers, “I’ll have to play Quidditch with Harry every day for the rest of time to thank him for this.”
She buries her answering smile in his neck, places a kiss to the left of his Adam's apple before dragging him through the doors to have her way with him.
It may not be every day, but James and Harry do start playing regularly.
Harry catches James and Lily kissing languidly in a fifth floor alcove one day and the blushing couple burst into laughter when Harry high-fives James on his way past.
The Marauders collaborate with Harry and his friends to pull off an Easter-themed prank.
And as time trickles on, Quidditch sessions morph into mealtime shenanigans and games of Exploding Snap; James helps Harry with Transfiguration and Harry teaches James about football.
Just before the school year ends, Harry is attacked by a group of Seventh Year Slytherins as he comes back from the kitchens late at night (a secret James passed onto him) and the Head Boy punches Mulciber square in the face at breakfast the next day.
When Harry’s parents pull him from Hogwarts after the incident, James promises to write him frequently and he does.
James and Lily get married and the pureblooded Potter is utterly bemused by the toasting fork he receives from Harry a few days after the wedding. Lily explains that it’s a muggle tradition and the silver present is put proudly on display in their new kitchen.
When James receives a letter telling him to stop writing, tear stained and profusely apologetic but his mum and dad think it’s too dangerous to have any contact with the magical world, James tells him he understands, that he’ll miss writing him and that he wishes him and his family the very best. He also adds that one day soon, when the world is put right, he’ll take Harry to his family’s box at Puddlemere stadium because he knows Harry loves Quidditch, that he’s a great flyer and that he belongs in the magical world.
When James reads Harry’s name in the Prophet one morning, he weeps. Lily cradles him as best she can with her protruding stomach and tells him how much of a difference he made to Harry’s short, important life.
When James’ son is born he asks Lily what she thinks about the name Harry. She closes her eyes as they well up with tears and smiles into the crook of his neck, whispers it’s perfect, as their newborn son, Harry, sleeps soundly between them.
When Voldemort comes to Godric's Hollow that dreadful Halloween night, James passes on from the earth knowing he has left the best part of himself, and his most beloved wife, behind – their son, Harry, named after another young boy whom James had loved, who found wonder in the magic he discovered aged 11, who belonged there, and who was too good, far too good, for the world as it was.