Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been J.K. Rowling.

Last Time

Harry took the lead and began, "Well I guess we will begin with…"

"So I guess we will begin with the explanation of how my parents are here, how I know they are my parents, and how I am alive since everybody seemed to think otherwise for a bit."

"What do you mean 'seemed to think otherwise,' you were dead" Ginny commented somewhat angrily.

"Well, yea, true, but… I think we should begin by what happened between my parents and Ginny before I arrived home this evening, as I do not completely understand it, and then I will pick up with everything else. Mum, Dad, why don't you start. What happened just before you arrived, when you arrived, and what was going through your mind?"

"Well," Lily began, "We had just gotten home after an evening out,"

"Wait you went out?" Harry interrupted her, "But how, you could have been killed, what were you thinking?"

"We were in disguise; we just needed to get out of the house for a bit. And don't interrupt your mother like that," James chastised gently.

"Sorry," Harry replied sheepishly, "please continue."

"Anyway, as I was saying, we had just gotten home and we said goodbye to Sirius, who was watching Harry, and when the door closed there was a flash of white light, and when it faded, we were standing just as we left, in our foyer, but it was different."

"Well, now we know the reason it looked different, but at that point we were just confused and alarmed." James continued for her. "Then we saw Ginny coming down the stairs with Albus, though to us he looked like our Harry."

"He does look just like you," said Lily with a smile. Harry looked a bit proud at that comment. He had heard it before, but to actually here it from his mother was something completely different.

"Right, so we thought that someone was trying to kidnap Harry. That led to a bit of an argument between us and Ginny, and wands were present, and then…" he trailed off at the end, not really wanting to voice what happened next.

"Okay, that clears one side of it up. Ginny?" Harry said softly.

"Well, I was coming down the stairs with Al, looking for James, when I saw two people standing in our foyer. I immediately went on the defensive. These people looked so much like your parents that I just could not believe it, but since no spell can bring back the dead, I figured that they were neo-Death Eaters hell bent on hurting you by posing as them. So we started arguing, and they said something about me being a Death Eater and kidnapping their son Harry. I began to put the pieces together, but I was still hung up on the impossibility of it all. That's when you apparated home."

"Okay, thank you, I guess it's time for me to explain my part in all of this. Today I decided to apparate home rather than Floo, and though this is odd, it is the least odd of the story. Anyway, I apparated right into the foyer, in front of Ginny, and I hear the Reducto curse cast. I quickly spun and disarmed my parents, just in time to be hit in the chest with the curse. That is when I died, again. The next thing I know, I am once again in the clean King's Cross between the worlds, and who do I find there but Severus Snape."

"What was that slimy Death Eater bastard doing in between? He should be rotting in the depths of Hell!" James exclaimed.

"That is ENOUGH!" Harry yelled. The children all looked frightened at their usually fun-loving father/uncle. James was speechless. "No one disrespects that man in this house. I may not be best friends with the man, but I have the utmost respect for him. He made some bad choices, sure, but the same could be said for others in the room as well," Harry continued, glaring pointedly at James. James for his part, looked properly chastised, and Lily looked both wistful for her lost friend, and proud that Harry could see past his father's prejudices at the same time.

"Anyway, Severus told me that my parents being here was a gift from Fate for dealing me a rough hand so to speak."

"That's the understatement of the century," Ron remarked. At this comment, Lily and James looked increasingly worried. Just what had happened in their son's life?

"Yes, thank you Ron. So basically, my parents will be here for a month, disappearing from the foyer exactly as they appeared. They will have a chance to learn what has happened, get to know me, us, and we can get to know them. They can go out in public since nobody outside of my immediate family, and those we introduce them to, will be able to see them. That is why they were invisible to you all when you first arrived."

"But what about the timeline?" asked Arthur. He was happy for Harry but that did not stop him from seeing the potential problems in this.

"That will not be a problem. Severus had already thought of that. They will not remember any of this, only we will. The gift was the ability to meet my parents without a risk of changing history. Everything has been thought of, there is no downside, nobody knows that they are here, except those that I want to know, and there is no way to change what has been."

"But wouldn't changing history be a good thing? We could save so many lives if they went back with the knowledge we have. We could save…" George said. He was getting excited by the mere possibility of saving Fred.

"But at what cost George? Yes, some would be saved, but how many others would be lost. By changing the past, we risk the future and the possibility of everything turning out worse than it has."
"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" George was getting upset now. Why couldn't Harry grasp what this could mean? At this point he wasn't thinking clearly; all he was thinking was how to save Fred.

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND? WHAT DO YOU MEAN I DON'T UNDERSTAND? Don't you think I realize what that could mean, who we could save? Me of all people? Don't you think I realize what saving lives could mean for Teddy? Don't you think I have thought about every death and suffered the guilt of what I could done differently to save even one of the lives I have lost, and yes I count him primarily among those. But what would be the cost of those changes? Who would we loose instead? Ginny? Angelina? You? The entire family? What children would no longer exist because circumstances changed? Teddy? James? Your unborn child? What if he was alive and he was the only one of the family to survive? How would he feel then? Think about it. Things did not turn out as well as they could have, people we love died, but it could have been so much worse." After this speech everyone got quiet for a few minutes contemplating all that had been said and all that could have been, both the positive and the negative.

"You're right." George quietly said. "I'm sorry. I know you understand."

"It's okay."

"Umm, sorry to interrupt, but what do you mean 'me of all people'?" Lily asked timidly. She did not know if she really wanted to know.

"That goes along with Dad's question about my 'enough trouble for a lifetime comment'. I guess we will get to the next. As you may remember, Hermione mentioned that you had passed when she first arrived. You know of the prophesy and what it spoke of. Voldemort heard of the first part only, that telling of a child to be born that would be the one to defeat him. It could have been either me, or Neville Longbottom. He chose me as being the bigger threat to him. This decision was the beginning of the trouble in my life that would last the next sixteen years. On Halloween of 1981, Voldemort came to our house with the intent to kill me."

"But, that's next week! We die next week? But you are so young! Oh James!" Lily said as she turned into James' shoulder and began to cry. She was leaving her baby boy, and would never get the opportunity to see him grow.

"Yes," said Harry, getting a bit choked up. He looked at Albus, who was the same age as he was in his parents' mind, and tried to imagine dealing with this kind of information. He couldn't.

"Dad met him in the foyer, trying to give Mum a chance to take me and run; he was killed instantly. Mum had run up to my room, and when Voldemort followed her up the stairs, she begged him to spare my life. He told her that she did not need to die, and that he would spare her life if she would step aside and let him kill me."
"But I would NEVER allow that!"

"No, and you didn't. He killed you when you would not give me up, and then he turned his wand at me."

"I don't want to hear this," Lily whimpered.

"How on Earth did you survive?" James questioned.

"The exact explanation will have to wait, as it pertains to events later in my life, but when he tried to kill me, his curse rebounded on him. I was taken to Aunt Petunia's and I lived there for the next sixteen years. I did not have contact with the wizarding world again until just before my eleventh birthday."

A/N: Hi all! I have finally finished my thesis and have found some time to write. I apologize for it being so short. I know that it ends abruptly, but I did not want to explain about Harry's years at Hogwarts, in addition to this preface of sorts, all at the same time.

I need your help. Do you want me to write about each year in detail, gloss over most of it and just focus on the main parts or the end of the year trials that he had to face every year, or do you want me to skip the explanations altogether and just jump straight into family interactions with them having already been told of the trio's adventures? Let me know what you guys think!

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