[In the interests of developing James' character more, I present the companion piece to 'What's in a Name?']

The Flip Side

Early July, 1980

James' POV

James sighed dramatically, even though there was no one around to see, flopping into an armchair in the study to stare at a pile of letters he didn't care to answer and wonder when Lily was going to talk to him again. Then he wondered, and not for the first time, if he had done the right thing, marrying a muggleborn.

He loved her. He did. He always had, or thought he did, in the back of his mind. Even in that last year and a half of Hogwarts, when he hadn't had the time or energy or inclination to chase after her anymore, if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he loved her. But no one did. His parents had died, and he had had to put aside childish things. He supposed they all thought they were doing him a favor, not-bringing-up his fruitless juvenile courtship.

The crush he'd had on Lily at Hogwarts was, most definitely, a childish infatuation. But since seventh year, they'd become friends. They'd fought together. She'd saved his life half a dozen times or more, and he had done the same. He knew her now as a person, not just as an object of affection, and his love was that of an adult for an equal, not a child for the one thing he can't have. And now, the light of his life was married to him, and less than a month away from bearing his child. He was equal parts excited, terrified, and overwhelmed. He wished she could just get past this stupid name thing.

He forgot, sometimes, that there was so much she didn't know about him and his world. She was so good at magic, and even better at blending in. She had done an absolutely amazing job learning their bonding ceremony (no one would have guessed, if they didn't know her, that she wasn't a proper prospect for the young Lord Potter). And after all these years, she hardly ever referenced anything unfamiliar about the muggle world.

But some days – like the last three – it was painfully clear that she didn't have, and never would have, the same sense of tradition that he (and every other pureblood) took for granted. And for all he (and his parents, before their deaths) supported the advancement and inclusion of muggleborns in their society, he did appreciate tradition, in a way that someone who didn't even know her great-grandparents' names really couldn't.

There wasn't anything wrong with the name 'Evan,' but part of being a Potter, part of having a lineage that stretched back hundreds of years – even if it seemed rather ridiculous – was being able to look back at the Tapestry and find all the ancestors with your name. It wasn't about the name itself, but about the history and continuity it represented. It was important to James for reasons he couldn't fully articulate even to himself that his son, his heir, should follow the traditions that the Potters had established over the last five-hundred years.

Unfortunately, every time James tried to explain that, Lily immediately countered by asking why her family shouldn't be equally honored in their child's name. She didn't understand the pressure that had been heaped on James' shoulders since the age of seven, to marry and continue the family name. Girls simply didn't have that expectation to live up to.

He had never told her that that night in the field hospital, when they didn't know if he was going to live or die, that in his deluded fever-dreams, he had spoken with his father's shade. The old man had been so disappointed in James. Not for fighting for what they both believed was right – The Dark and its false Lord could not be allowed to destroy Magical Britain, torturing and killing without consequence – but for failing to marry and sire an heir.

That was the reason he had, in a brief moment of clarity, asked the only woman he had ever loved to marry him, yet again, despite the fact he had no idea whether he was going to live through the night, and no hope of her accepting the offer. That was the reason he was so eager to know the sex of the poor unborn child: the Potter clan were patrilineal, and in these uncertain times, a male heir was their best hope of securing the name for another generation. Not that a daughter couldn't inherit, but everything would be vastly more complicated for a girl-child.

If it were up to him, they would simply adopt a likely boy – the war was creating more orphans every day. But the Potter Family Magic, which directed the inheritance, called for an heir born into the House. The magic had been tied to the blood and the name of the family since its inception, with the marriage of Ignotius Peverell's thrice-great granddaughter to a muggleborn Potter in 1468. They were one of the oldest pureblood houses with such an inheritance restriction in place.

The Blacks and Bones were twice as old, of course, but they allowed for blood adoption and simple magical adoption respectively to carry on the name. Longbottom, the other Most Ancient House, had married half-bloods and muggleborns with no regard for the purity of their blood until about ten generations ago. Urquhart was older, and Malfoy too, but the latter hardly counted, seeing as they had run off to France and come back, and who knew what they got up to on the Continent? All the others of Burke's so-called Sacred Twenty-Eight were less than four-hundred years old.

The point was, it was a minor miracle that the Potters hadn't died out already. But every generation for the past twenty-five generations had managed to create an heir. Even James' father had managed it, and James was pretty sure Charlus had 'kept for the other team' as his mother would have put it. James couldn't imagine being the Last Potter, seeing his family die out under his watch, like so many others had in this thrice-cursed War. (As Moony liked to say, M. de Mort was the worst thing ever to happen to pureblood supremacy. By the time he was done with them, there'd be no purebloods left.)

James was determined to do this Lord Potter thing right if it killed him, which included naming his Heir properly, like his father and grandfather and the last ten or more before him. Potter was the most important name, of course, but that the first and middle names should also follow tradition was almost as much so. He was obviously quite willing to behave irrationally about this – up to refusing to speak to his pregnant wife for three whole days.

The son, the first-born son, at least, had to be named after a king of England. It was considered good luck, to name the one who was to rule the Family in his turn after a successful ruler. And the son's middle name should be the father's first because, like the Druids, the Potters believed in acknowledging the continuity between parent and child. (A daughter's middle name should be that of her mother, but James had been more willing to compromise on the name of a daughter who would be less likely to inherit, especially since Mary was the child's maternal grandmother's name, too.)

There were families who named their heirs after the mother's family. The Cavendishes and Moores came to mind. But that simply wasn't how it was done with the Potters.

James had offered every compromise he could think of, from allowing Evan to be the name of their second-born to adding a second middle name to letting Lily name a girl anything she wanted. But all his extremely hormonal, extremely pissed-off wife had heard was that her input and her family were less valued than his. She had even played the 'this is because I'm muggleborn' card. And the worst part was, he couldn't even tell her she was wrong. It was just a fact: he would never break from Potter tradition if he could help it.

He understood why Sirius had broken with the Blacks, but the fact of the matter was, James was not a Blood Traitor, and he would feel like one if he started casually overturning centuries of tradition.

Some things, like political affiliations, were meant to shift, as needed, and others, like the holidays they celebrated, could be compromised upon. (The Potters had been Progressive long enough that it had become traditional, and James liked Christmas, though Lily, contrarily enough, celebrated Yule, complete with giving him the silent treatment all day on the Winter Solstice and bullying Sirius into sharing the Black Family Rituals.) But yet other things, like naming traditions, or the way an Heir was raised, or the First Magic celebration or the Marriage Ritual – the things that really defined a family – they weren't up for debate.

That was probably something they should have talked about more before the wedding. But for some reason, James hadn't really considered that it would be a problem. In the world he grew up in, if the Head of the Family made a decision, everyone else accepted it. Even if taking care of children day-to-day was generally the job of the Lady of the House, he should still have had the final word on things like names and discipline and the child's introduction to magic and society.

Two months – two months and a few days, anyway – probably hadn't really been enough time to prepare for a life together. The solicitors and goblins had managed to finalize the marriage contract in that time, though, and Lily had memorized the bonding ritual, and if it wasn't done at midsummer, they'd have to wait another full year, and with their lives the way they were, they could be dead by then. Now. Could have been. And instead they were about to have a child.

Yes, they were in hiding for the child's safety, and yes, there was some horrible prophecy afoot, of which Dumbledore refused to tell them all the details, 'for their own safety' (honestly, James was starting to see where some of Lily's frustration with the man came from). And Lily was spending all her time, when she wasn't actively preparing for the baby to arrive or arguing with him over stupid things researching protective spells and wards and rituals.

But despite all that, James was thrilled (and terrified). He was going to be a father. All he had to do was convince his wife to let him do it the right way, and he was sure, everything would work out.

He knew what he had to do. He gathered his resolve and strode from the study to find his witch and make her understand, once and for all:

It really wasn't about the name.