James lay on his bed in the flat in East London, curled so that his knees were against his chest, staring at the wall, where his invisibility cloak hung from a peg. The flat felt terribly empty without Sirius and Remus there, and although Lily was there, she was by nature much quieter than Sirius.

She had gone to the kitchen to make him something to eat. He didn't really want to eat. He felt queasy in a subtle way, as though if he moved or ate he might spin out and lose control. Everything felt rather tedious and unnecessary to him, as though even something as simple as breathing was too much to do in a world where his father was not included. He wished he could pull that invisibility cloak over himself and disappear completely.

Charlus had been so excited when he gave James that cloak. He could remember the flush to Charlus's face, the joy at sharing something that he had with his son. James remembered the way his father had opened his old Hogwarts trunk with such pride and awe, as though it were a holy grail of sorts, and how sacred each time had felt.

Suddenly, James sat up.

Hurrying, he rushed to pull on his trainers and his jumper - the one that had once belonged to Charlus - and went down the hallway of the flat, nearly running into Lily, who was coming back to the bedroom, carrying a tray of bacon and eggs. "James?" she turned about, following him in his rush back to the living room. She put the plate down on the coffee table. "Honey, what're you doing?"

"I've just remembered, my dad's trunk," he said.

"His trunk?" Lily asked.

"Yeah, I need to go look at it." He paused. "You want to come along, then?"

Lily nodded, "Yeah, I'll come with you. Let me get my shoes." She went down the hallway quickly, shouting over her shoulder, "Eat some of that bacon while I'm getting them!"

James went over and absently grabbed a piece of bacon from the plate. He ate the piece slowly, letting the taste of it fill his mouth. Even bacon didn't taste as good and after he'd eaten half the piece, he broke up what was left of it and tossed it to Roger, who lay sprawled across the seat of a chair by the fire.

When Lily came back from getting her shoes - and apparently changing, for she was wearing a different shirt and her hair was up in a ponytail when she returned - James took up the floo powder and pinched a handful out, tossing it into the fire. "The Lupin House," he declared, then waved his palm. "After you, Evans."

Lily stepped into the fire and disappeared with a crack.

James glanced at the left over bacon on the table, then over at Roger. "Oi, if you want to finish that up, you're welcome to it," he said, pinching more powder and stepping into the fire himself - "Lupin House!" he called, and with a pop he was gone.

Roger sat staring at the fire as it turned back to orange after their disappearance. Sunlight was coming through the windows on the other side of the flat, and he had been thinking about getting up anyway to go lay in the bright, warm gashes that the light made across the floor. He stretched, curling his back into a wide arch, and then inverting the stretch as well. Now limber, he jumped down from the chair, walking languidly across the room to the coffee table, and leaped up, eagerly grabbing onto the strips of bacon that James had left behind.

Charlus's trunk was old and banged up from years of use, a bit burned on one side from when the old Potter house in Godric's Hollow had been ruined a couple years before. It sat in the corner of the bedroom that Charlus and Dora shared in the Lupin house, a stack of cheap science fiction novels sat on top of it, along with an old quaffle signed by the entire quidditch team that had player the year Charlus had graduated from Hogwarts, and a framed photograph of a smiling James, seated on his broomstick in the air high over the pitch during the Tourney in second year.

"Look at you," Lilly said, picking up the frame and looking at it. "Such a small little toerag."

"You were small then yourself, Evans," James replied, putting the books on the end of the bed.

The house was empty, save for the pair of them. Dora had gone to stay with Minerva McGonagall and Elphinstone Urquart at their house in Hogsmeade for a couple of days, and the house was silent and a bit haunted feeling, James thought. He'd set up one of Sirius's old records on the player downstairs just to keep some noise about in the creaky place, and so the silence was being filled up with the sound of the Beatles Paperback Writer as they unlatched the trunk and pushed open the lid.

Inside was the usual jumbled mess of things that Charlus had always kept in his trunk, artifacts of his life in pieces of paper, photographs, and momentos. Like by looking at this old stuff he could visit his dad in a way.

Lily knelt beside him, watching as James reached in and shifted things about. "Look," he said, holding up a large photograph, "Here's the whole Gryffindor Quidditch team in his Seventh Year. There's Minnie." James pointed, and Lily tilted her head to look as he held out the picture. The team was a bit ragtag, worse for wear as the photo had been taken after the conclusion of a game. Their uniforms were dirty. Minnie's hair had been in a pair of braids, but now they were half undone, tufts of it sticking up in odd places. She had her arm flung about Charlus's shoulders. There were other faces there that Lily thought she rather recognized as well, but none enough to pinpoint who was who. They waved and smiled and tossed the quaffle about among one another and Lily wondered if it was the very quaffle that now sat beside the stack of martian novels on the bed.

"And here's the first picture of mum and dad together," James said, putting aside the team photo for a old black and white, clearly taken by a muggle camera, where a young girl with curly black hair sat beside the striking, athletic boy. They were in Hogsmeade, sitting on the edge of the water fountain in the square, and the girl looked like she might've been in the middle of laughing, though the muggle photo did not move the way wizarding photos did.

"She was so pretty," Lily commented, and then added, "And look how handsome he was. Wow." She nudged James, "No wonder you turned out alright."

"Yes, my family is aesthetically pleasing, Evans." He looked at her with a smirk, "Just imagine how bloody incredible our kids will look." He winked and Lily flushed.

"Oh hush."

James turned back to the trunk. There were more photographs, pictures of Charuls and Minnie, of Minnie and Florian Fortescue ("oh look at his freckles!" Lily said, giggling, for the poor young Florian Fortescue was all but polka dotted). Some of the pictures were copies of ones from the alcove off the Trophy Room Passageway, others were ones that even James had never seen before in all the times that Charlus had pulled out the contents of the trunk to reminisce. Baby pictures of James were tucked in there, little James with a diaper running through the house laughing his head off, and one playing with a fat black cat that he couldn't even remember. There was a picture of him roasting marshmallows on a stick in their backyard, and one playing with a big ugly toad in a pond somewhere. Little James waved from four feet off the ground on his first broomstick that he got when he was eight, and there was a photograph in Diagon Alley on his eleventh birthday when they went go get his supplies for Hogwarts, as well as a series of them shot inside of Ollivanders as the proud father witnessed his son be chosen by his wand.

Lily ran her fingers over one of James standing on Platform 9 3/4, looking quite harassed as he stared at the camera with a tired expression, standing in front of the scarlet train. "This is the day I met you," she said.

"Yup," James replied, "First day of school."

"I want to frame this one," she said, setting it aside.

James laughed, "Why?"

"Because you're bloody adorable," she replied. "And one day when we have our own home, I want to have family photos all over the wall." She picked up the photo of Charlus and Dora at the fountain and put it in her newly formed pile, along with the quidditch team photo. "One day, you'll have your own trunk full of things to show our children."

"Yeah," James said.

"Our incredibly aesthetically pleasing children," Lily said, teasing him. James half-heartedly laughed, and turned back to the trunk. Lily drew a deep breath and turned to look with him.

Charlus's seventh year textbooks were in there, many of the same books that James and Lily had used, though in much older editions. James riffled through the pages and found a lot of scribbled drawings of snitches and dogs in the margins, doodles that had helped his dad pass the time revising his work and listening to various professors drone through their lectures. He smiled seeing hearts with his mum's name in them - Charlus + Mia. "Looks like my text books," James chuckled. "And all my exam papers."

Lily laughed, "No...Really?"

"Yes," James laughed. "All up the side of my O.W.L.s, I had L.E., L.E., L.E., over and over.

Lily flushed.

"Do you ever doodle my name?" he asked.

Lily replied, "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Your journal is full of my name isn't it?" James smirked.

"You might be mentioned."

"Dear Diary, James Potter is sooo hot, he's sooo sexy, I want his body sooo much..."

"Shut up or I'll be writing about how I've broken off an engagement with an arrogant toerag."

James laughed, "Oh Evans, you can't resist me."

"I could," she replied.

"You wish you could. You tried for six years, Evans, but see how that turned out."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

He decided to stop pressing his luck and turned back to the trunk again. "Sirius will want this," he said, lifting a dog collar with tags that said SNUFFLES on it.

Lily snorted.

"He really wanted a dog," James said sadly. "Dunno why him and mum never got one. He loved Snuffles, though. Always talked about him... Sirius only stayed with us a couple weeks one summer while we were trying to figure out how to turn him back from his animalamangus form..."

"Animagi, love."

"...but Dad sure got attached quick."

Lily said, "Your Dad loved everyone who needed love so very much, and so very freely. Did I ever tell you about the time he told me that I better be good to you... and then told me to tell him if you ever mistreated me, too."

"Sounds like Dad," James laughed.

"In Costa Rica, your Dad came over and was talking to me, and he said for me to learn to wield the power of love." Lily looked at James, "Did he ever tell you anything about that? Is it something he studied?"

James shrugged, "I dunno."

"He isn't the first person that's encouraged me that way," she said.

"Then you ought to find out more about it, study it yourself," James encouraged her. "You're bloody bright, Evans, I reckon if you put your heart into it that you'll be the most brilliant person in the field of love magic."

"Love magic," she repeated, eyebrow raised.

James flushed.

Lily reached her hand out and put it on his shoulder, "You're bright and brilliant too, James," she told him, "And your Dad, he would agree with me on that. He was so, so, so very proud of you."

James's face twitched between a crumpled frown and a smile, teetering the dangerous line between them. "Evans, I dunno what I'll do without him."

Lily nodded slowly, remembering the Christmas when she'd lost her father, too. "Well," she said slowly, "You get up the next day and you tell yourself to bathe and eat, to get dressed and do the chores and things you have to do that day. You remind yourself to function, to take each step as you walk. Just one more, you'll tell yourself. You'll measure time in 'days since Dad died' for awhile and then it'll be weeks, months... Then one day you'll realize it's years, and you've not had to remind yourself of things because you've learned how to do them. People will say you've gotten over it or that you've moved on, but you never really will because every time something happens - good or bad - you'll think of him. You'll wonder what he would've said about this, or picture him laughing at that... and for a second you'll remember it's been 566 days since you last saw him, and it'll be raw, but... somehow not entirely unbearable."

James took her hands in his. "Thanks, Evans."

"I love you, James," she said, "And I'm here for you, every single step of the way through this."

James buried his face in her shoulder and she patted his back gently, her fingers in his hair... And over his shoulder, something caught her eye. A small bit of paper, stuffed into a crevice in the rim of the trunk, poking out from the lining. She slid her palm out of James's hair and plucked the paper out, carefully unfolding it behind James's back.

There was nothing written on the scrap of paper, save for one thing - a name.

Harry.