Tattered and Torn

James whistled as he walked down Privet Drive. He'd been a whistling champion as a kid and still liked whistling to keep in practice. The song was Be Thou My Vision, which according to Lily was one of Harry's favourites. He was hoping to show his son, upon his arrival, that he, James Potter, was not entirely out of touch with the past or present.

The bushy-haired girl he'd seen with Harry the evening before occupied the front porch of Number Four, Privet Drive. A cousin perhaps? James wasn't sure. Hesitantly, he called out, "Morning."

The girl looked up and offered him a sort of half-smile. "Oh...morning. You must be Harry's father."

James grinned. "How'd you guess?"

"You look just like him, it isn't hard." The girl studied him a little more closely. "Except for your eyes...your eyes are different. And the scar, of course."

James shook his head. "Okay...you know who I am, but I don't know who you are. Care to clear this mystery up for me?"

Another half-smile quirked the girl's lips. "My name's Hermione Granger. I'm...well, I'm Harry's girlfriend."

"Harry has good taste," James said. Hermione flushed slightly. "Speaking of, where is he?"

Hermione hesitated. "He...Moody came to pick him up at nine. He's at St. Mungo's."

"St. Mungo's? Why?" James asked in alarm.

Hermione bit her lip. "Because...well, because Remus Lupin means so much to him...he was hurt last night, hurt badly."

James paled. "Will he be all right?"

"I don't know," Hermione answered honestly. "But Harry's scared out of his mind, and really I can't blame him. He's so afraid to lose anyone else he can't think straight. He cried all night."

"Yeah," James said softly. He walked over and joined Hermione on the porch, leaning against the post on the other side of the steps from her. "I guess if I'd lost my parents I'd be afraid to lose anyone else too."

"It isn't just you," Hermione said matter-of-factly. "In fact, I really don't think the fact that he had lost you even really bothered him until last month."

"Well, who else has he lost?"

"He saw a good friend of his murdered a year ago," Hermione answered simply. "And..." She stopped and bit her lip. "It isn't my place to tell you, I barely know you..."

"But no one else is going to," James pointed out. "Why last month? What happened that upset him so badly?"

Hermione hesitated. "He...well, once Sirius got out of Azkaban he and Harry became extraordinarily close. Sirius gave Harry advice on surviving the Triwizard Tournament our fourth year--that's a long story and one I'll let him tell you. By the time we started our fifth year last year, Harry had come to think of Sirius as a sort of father-brother mixture. And the one thing Sirius cared the most about was Harry."

"So what happened?" James prompted.

Hermione took a deep breath. "Harry had been getting these...visions...he was reading Voldemort's thoughts and moods. Last month--June twenty-fifth, as I recall--in the middle of our History of Magic O.W.L., Harry got a vision of Sirius being tortured in the Department of Mysteries. He wasn't--it was a trap to get Harry down there--but we fell for it, we went after him, but only because Ron and Neville and Ginny and Luna and I insisted on going, Harry wanted to go alone. He didn't want to put us in danger...anyway, we fell into this trap and almost all got ourselves killed. Sirius and Moody and a bunch of other wizards showed up to save us and...well, while Sirius was duelling his cousin Bellatrix, she...she killed him."

James felt the colour drain out of his face again. "Oh, no. God, no, Sirius..." His voice trembled as he spoke.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said softly. "I told you I wasn't the one to tell you..."

"No, no, I'd rather find out now," James said quickly. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Dammit, why didn't anyone try to tell me this before?" he burst.

Hermione looked at him incredulously. "Who would have told you? Remus? Harry? They're still hurting, Mr. Potter. Remus didn't see the wreckage of your house; Harry didn't remember. But both of them saw Sirius die...they had to watch helplessly as he fell through that arch and died, and they couldn't do a damn thing to stop it. And the memory of that night is still horribly fresh in their minds...they remember every detail, and they're never going to forget. Harry and Sirius were incredibly close--so were Sirius and Remus--they were like a family, the only family the others had. And now Sirius is gone, and they're in a lot of pain, because without Sirius they don't feel complete. Haven't you noticed that Harry is afraid to love you, afraid to trust you? He's afraid if he admits that he cares, he'll lose you too. And he doesn't want to let himself believe that you're actually his father, because if he does then he'll have to face a lot of other questions too, questions he doesn't want to ask because he's afraid they'll sound selfish."

"Like what?"

"Why didn't you come back to England for all these years? Why did you run? Why didn't you stop and tell someone where you were going? Why did you abandon him?"

"I didn't," James said angrily. "I'd never have abandoned my son if I'd known. I thought he was dead."

"You wouldn't have if you'd known," Hermione replied. "The fact is, you didn't know and you did abandon him. And even if he was dead, shouldn't you have stuck around long enough for the funeral before you ran? You would have found out that Harry was alive and he wouldn't have been stuck with the Dursleys for all these long, painful years."

James frowned. "If he's going to be angry about it--"

"He won't, that's the thing. He got angry easily last year...and it cost him his godfather." James blinked at Hermione in astonishment. "Or at least that's how he thinks. He's not going to get angry with you because he's afraid you'll disappear...or that Jamie will, or that Remus will. If he gets angry with anyone it's going to be with himself, because he'll rationalise that he shouldn't have given up on you so easily just because the Dursleys told him you were dead. Give him a few days and he'll start blaming himself--start thinking that maybe, maybe if he'd been a better son, if he'd been quieter or politer or nicer or whatever, you wouldn't have left him. That you and his mother would have taken the time to wait for his 'funeral', found out he was alive, and gone to get him. He'll sink into a deeper depression than he's already in...and he might get suicidal, think that if he just turns himself over to Voldemort everything will be all right again." Abruptly, Hermione stood. "And if he kills himself, I personally will never forgive you." With that, she turned and went back into the house, leaving James on the front porch feeling very confused.