Prompt: What if Lily never died in S&S?
They felt the wards shatter, James and Lily—felt the Fidelius release its iron grip on their throats and minds, felt the breaking—felt their children scream.
In an instant they were on their feet.
In another, they appeared on their front lawn with a crack. James made a small choked sound of horror.
Wreck and ruin, smoke and fractured stone—
A smear of blood in the hall when they rushed in. A scrape through the wallpaper shaped like a werewolf's claws. They were running now. Lily took the stairs three at a time; James four. Cold wind whipped into the house through the hole where the back wall and James's study had been. And then they turned the last corner into what had been the nursery and was now—
James tripped over the broken body of his friend. Grey fur and red blood, yellow eyes that used to laugh back at him from the next bed over in Gryffindor Tower. James would know those eyes anywhere. The only part of him that never Changed.
Grief struck him like a sword but slowed him for no more than a second. His sons—
Lily made a low sound in her throat. "James—James, they're alive—"
Alive.
When Albus brought up his concerns about the boys—raising one to be a hero, Jules, who lay unconscious and bleeding in one crib, compared to his twin, Harry, who'd been found safe and sleeping fitful in the other—Lily and James put their metaphorical foot down.
(In this world, James did not face the prospect of parenting alone. In this world James was slightly less shattered by too much grief too early.)
Jules and Harry grew up loved. They learned to fly together, and to read; they gasped together listening to their parents' stories of Uncle Remus—
(Whose wolf body, James and Lily didn't tell them, splayed defensive and dead in front of two infants' cribs, sparked enough public backlash to recategorize werewolves as human—)
—and of Aunt Alice and Mum's friend Marlene. They played together with Neville and Susan and the many red-headed Weasleys.
So they grew together. So too did they grow apart: Harry's arrogant pride was all James—his sharp mind and sharper questions all Lily—but to those inherited traits he added a reserve all his own. His parents loved him no less for it, but at times, they did not understand him.
Harry himself was not surprised to hear the Hat, upon looking at his mind, call out Slytherin!
Nor, it must be said, was Jules. Impulsive, reckless children have plenty of chances to learn all the benefits of having a sneaky quick-talking sibling or friend around. Harry had gotten the Potter twins out of trouble countless times (and gotten them into it about one third of those times). Jules used to go find Harry in the library or in his room when Jules needed something, just like Harry knew to look for Jules outside or in the dueling room or at Ron's house—so looking for Harry in the Slytherin dorms wasn't too different. Mostly just a longer walk.
(The Potter twins were in perfect agreement that Hogwarts had far too many stairs.)
They grew up some more—still together. Still apart. They faced Voldemort together, in the end. Armed with trust in one another. Buoyed by their parents' love. They went home together too, at the end of it all—and one year later strode together across the Hogwarts graduation stage, and James Potter (for, he told Harry solemnly, the first and last time in his life) joined in a cry of "SLYTHERIN!" when Harry took the school's award in Potions excellency.
(Lily never did let James live that one down.)
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