Chapter Text
He sat behind his imposing mahogany desk at the Ministry, trying—and failing—not to feel restless. The weight of the office pressed in on him, thick and heavy, despite the soft flicker of enchanted light. The air smelled faintly of old parchment and polished wood.
Stacks of neatly arranged parchment lined the surface before him, beckoning for him to waste away more hours of his life hunched over them. For once, he ignored them. His gaze instead remained fixed on the polished brass plaque that adorned his desk.
Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement
The words gleamed under the soft glow of his office’s overhead light, crisp and unwavering. Below the title, etched in bold, unrelenting letters, was his name.
JAMES POTTER
He stared at it, and a familiar weight settled in his chest once more. He had held this title for three years, and yet, even now, it felt like a burden more than an achievement. A reminder of everything he was supposed to be—strong, capable, the unshakable leader of wizarding law. A man who had rebuilt order from the ashes of war. A man who had earned this chair.
Today the letters on the plaque seemed to especially mock him, cold and unyielding. A reminder not of his greatest triumphs, but his greatest failures.
His hand drifted upward, pushing his glasses up as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. His reflection in the polished plaque wavered slightly, distorted but still recognizable. The man staring back at him looked tired. Older than his years. His once jet-black hair, untamed and wild in his youth, now carried streaks of silver—subtle, but impossible to ignore. The laugh lines that had once accompanied youthful mischief now framed his eyes with deeper, wearier creases.
Time had not been unkind, not exactly. It had simply left its mark, as it did on all men who had seen too much, lost too much.
A perfect life.
That was what he had now, wasn’t it? He had no reason to complain (to scream). His life was perfect (full of regrets). He had a loving wife, three (four, FOUR damn it) beautiful children, a successful (unless) career, and not enough problems to keep him busy (to keep the nightmares at bay).
What more could he ask for?
He squeezed his eyes shut, inhaling sharply through his nose.
The thought rang hollow even in his own head.
His lips twisted into a grimace, a half-formed sneer of self-reproach. Lying to yourself only works for so long, James.
He exhaled slowly, his fingers tapping against the desk as he glanced toward the grand, enchanted window behind him. The skies above London were cast in the golden hues of late July, the sun beginning its slow descent. Another summer slipping away, another year gone.
July was always the hardest.
The frantic knock at his door barely registered before it burst open, slamming against the wall with a force that made his inkwell rattle.
James was already on his feet. His body moved before his mind caught up, instincts honed by years of war snapping into place.
Sirius stood in the doorway, chest heaving, his usual air of unshakable confidence gone. His hands gripped the doorframe like he needed the support, his grey eyes wild.
James felt something cold coil in his stomach.
“Sirius?” His voice was sharp, demanding. “What in Merlin’s name has gotten into you?”
Sirius swallowed hard. For a moment, he didn’t speak, just dragged in another breath, visibly forcing himself to steady. But it wasn’t enough to mask the raw panic beneath the surface.
James braced himself for something ridiculous—another Auror fistfight, another smuggled creature wreaking havoc in the department. If it was really something serious then the alarms on his desk would already be blaring. But then Sirius spoke.
“J-James.” His voice was hoarse, breathless. “It’s the kids—”
Everything inside James stilled.
Sirius took another breath, his voice gaining strength through sheer will.
“I just got a message from Hogwarts. The hospital wing. Someone’s in a magically induced coma.”
The floor beneath James might as well have disappeared. The world tilted, his vision narrowing as his heart slammed against his ribs.
He was moving before thought fully formed, sprinting past Sirius, past the dumbfounded assistants in the hallway. His breath came fast, his pulse roaring in his ears, he had no way of hearing let alone understanding whatever Sirius shouted after him.
Not again.
The words pounded in his skull with every step.
They were supposed to be safe. Hogwarts was supposed to be safe. ( Just like Godric’s Hollow was supposed to be safe).
Not again. Not again. ( NOT AGAIN).
James raced toward the main lobby, his breath ragged, his pulse a roaring tide in his ears.
As he entered the massive chamber, the sunlight pouring through the enchanted glass ceiling cast golden reflections on the black memorial stone that stood at the center of the hall. It was massive—almost monolithic— its polished obsidian surface absorbing the light rather than reflecting it. Ancient runes lined the edges, intertwining with delicate, silver-etched names. So many names.
Thousands of tiny inscriptions, as fragile as their owners had once been, whispered their silent accusations at him. James had spent years avoiding this very monument. Ensuring his gaze never lingered too long, never giving himself a chance to acknowledge what lay carved into its surface. But today, he found himself powerless to stop the trajectory of his eyes.
His pupils honed in on the small white cursive letters near the bottom left corner of the slab. The name was still there, of course, exactly where he and Lily had etched it next to the crowd of other desolate parents over a decade ago.
‘ Harry James Potter’
It was both a memorial for what they lost, and a reminder for what they could never allow to happen again.
His feet halted as if petrified. He stared at his own handwriting forever carved into the rock. Just as he had been unable to resist looking, he now found himself defenseless against the onslaught of memories that came flooding back with relentless force. Just the sight of the gleaming slab of cool stone before him seemed to shatter all his carefully constructed mental barriers.
‘The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him.’
That was it. Those were the words that had sealed their fate. The first words of an incomplete prophecy, splashed in bold print across the front page of The Daily Prophet . An almost laughable justification for the massacre that followed.
Voldemort had attacked the hospitals first.
Mercilessly. Strategically. Sending his Death Eaters to slaughter every infant they could find. The screams of mothers still echoed in James’s nightmares. The bloodied cradles, the lifeless tiny bodies, the grief that drowned the entire Wizarding World in its wake.
No one could have know that was just the beginning of the true genocide.
Somehow, Voldemort had gotten his hands on the Hogwarts registry. Every child born within the three-year window surrounding the prophecy was marked for death. No one was spared.
Not even the children of his own followers.
It remained, to this day, the Dark Lord’s most gruesome legacy. The wizarding world, for centuries divided by their gaps in ideology and status, was suddenly unified under a singular, all-consuming force.
Grief.
Almost overnight, the majority of the dark side's forces turned against their master. Wizards who had once followed him with unwavering devotion now sought his downfall with the fervor of the damned.
James had tried to hate them for it. He had wanted to. For their cowardice, for their hypocrisy. For only realizing the depths of Voldemort’s madness when it was already too late.
And for a time, he had succeeded.
Until one day, he suddenly found himself standing side by side (it used to be across from) with a dead-eyed Lucius Malfoy on the battlefield.
The man was barely a year older than when James had last seen him, yet he looked like he had aged a lifetime. Hollowed out and, stripped of all pretense, the sharp arrogance that had once seemed to define him was now nothing more than a brittle shell.
It was then that James understood.
No amount of hatred he could muster for the defectors—no matter how deep, no matter how seething—would ever surpass the hatred they bore for themselves.
The guilt.
It was the same expression James saw staring back at him every morning in the mirror.
The look of a man who had failed to protect his son.
The look of a man who had been forced to learn, in agonizing detail, the way his baby had died—tortured at the hands of a cold, unfeeling monster.
So James had let it go. There was no point in holding onto hatred for them when he was already drowning in his own hatred for himself.
Besides, he couldn’t even hate the man that had been responsible for Voldemort initially learning about the prophecy because he had killed himself years ago.
His last fleeting thought before he Apparated away—his gaze locked on the memorial stone—was that maybe it would have hurt less if Harry had been younger.
Just an infant, like some of the others had been. Too young to form memories, to develop a personality, to express his own little preferences. Maybe then, James wouldn't have so many moments etched into his soul, so many reminders of what had been taken from him.
But even if that were true, even if it would have spared him this unbearable pain, James could not bring himself to wish for those memories to be erased.
No. Even if it hurt more, he clung all the harder to the few remaining scraps of his firstborn’s short life.
The way Harry’s face would light up whenever someone familiar entered the room, his little hands reaching out with unfiltered joy. The deep scowl he would make when Lily tried—always unsuccessfully—to sneak bananas into his baby mush, followed immediately by an indignant splatter of food across the highchair. The sound of his giggles, the warmth of his tiny arms wrapping around James’s neck in a clumsy embrace.
And his drawings.
The drawing Harry had made of James as a stag—galloping along the beach, little stick-figure Harry riding on his back—was still tucked away in the top drawer of James’s bedside table.
Harry had never seen the ocean.
He had never even stepped beyond the walls of the house he had been born in. A house meant to protect him, a house that had instead become his prison.
James and Lily, naively assured they would one day be able to fulfill his dreams, had filled their son’s tiny head with stories. Painting vivid pictures of all the incredible places he would one day see—the towering mountains, the endless green fields, the deep forests teeming with magic. But above all, Harry had always loved the stories of the beach. The sound of the waves, the feel of the sand between his toes, the sight of the vast, open horizon stretching forever beyond the sea.
He had drawn picture after picture of it. Bright, crayon-colored worlds full of imagined adventures, waiting for the day he could finally experience them himself.
That day had never come.
Even if James somehow managed to one day forgive himself for not saving his son, he knew there was one thing he would never forgive.
He had never taken Harry to the beach.
He had never taken him anywhere.
Instead, his son had died exactly as he had been born—trapped within the same four walls he had been surrounded by his entire life. His world nothing but a shadowy echo of what it should have been. Never once glimpsing the vibrant, beautiful world outside he had so longed to see.