Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. I make no claims to ownership.

James Sirius Potter, Harry offers when the baby is born, and Ginny smiles and agrees, looking down at the boy in her arms with his father's black, black mop of hair.

Albus Severus Potter, Harry insists when the baby is born, and Ginny swallows her pride, because it is obvious Harry wants this so much, and when James is brought in his brown, brown eyes flash dark in jealousy at the love Harry displays to Albus.

Lily Ginevra Potter, Harry says when the baby is born, but after Albus Severus Potter, with so many nights of tears, Ginny cannot do it, and so instead she says, Lily Luna Potter.

Ginny knows that their family has problems, and most of it starts with Harry. There is something in him that she had not predicted when she married him. At night she holds onto James, and while he sleeps, she whispers that even if his father doesn't love him, she has more than enough love for him to make up for it.

It hurts to breathe when she sees how much affection Harry showered on Albus. Even when James acts up in hopes of getting his father's attention, Harry gives him barely a glance. The only good thing to come of it is that James becomes more independent while Albus clings to Harry.

Despite all of this, they are happy most of the time. It is obvious that Harry dotes upon Albus, but James helps Ginny take care of Lily. Slowly, though, Ginny begins to see it.

Black, black hair.

Brown, brown eyes.

She wonders how Harry cannot see it himself.

Then comes the day she catches James out in the garden. At first she can't tell what he's doing; she's forgotten what it's like to hear Parseltongue. Ginny freezes, rooted to the spot as he looks up at her, grinning, and holds the snake in his hands out to her.

For so long she's thought it was silly for Harry's possession of the horcrux to give him the gift of Parseltongue despite him being otherwise unaffected by it. Harry hasn't been near a snake since the war, though, so she simply believed him when he said he lost the ability with the horcrux.

James screams when she swats the snake out of his hands and incinerates it.

"It's okay," Ginny soothes, taking him into her arms and stroking his black, black hair. "It's okay, Jamie. You're my brave little lion, aren't you?"

He doesn't understand, and she hopes that he never will. She takes his small hand and pulls him away from the ashes.

"You can't tell Daddy about this," Ginny warns.

After a moment, James nods, his brown, brown eyes hesitant but trusting. He lets her lead him inside, where she cleans him up.

As she wets a rag and runs it over his face, James asks, "Am I a mistake, Mummy?"

Her heart breaks.

James makes it into Gryffindor, and Ginny breathes a sigh of relief. Harry just smiles like it's to be expected. She knows it's not, though. James is confident and independent, the perfect fit for Slytherin; she wonders how long he sat beneath the hat, weighing his options, until his instinct for self-preservation made him choose Gryffindor.

"I won't! I won't be a Slytherin!" Albus cries.

Ginny has to put a stop to this before Harry catches on. "James, give it a rest!" she says sharply.

"I only said he might be," James sneers, but he offsets it with a grin. "There's nothing wrong with that. He might be in Slytherin…"

Her lips flatten, and he pauses, his brown, brown eyes calculating, before subsiding.

Once they are through the barrier, Ginny looks around for James, and sees him holding court with other students. They are gathered around him, watching him raptly. It is not until Albus pipes up that Ginny is able to rid the monsters inside her head.

Then James pops up again. "Teddy's back there. Just seen him! And guess what he's doing? Snogging Victoire!"

There's a method to his madness, though, and Ginny sees him hide his disappointment when Harry doesn't respond. The light is fading from James' brown, brown eyes and becoming steadily darker.

Ginny still doesn't understand how Albus made it into Slytherin. Harry has coddled his favored son too much; Albus is not a leader, but trails behind Scorpius Malfoy into Slytherin. He's also entitled, and when it's proven he doesn't have Harry's natural talent at Quidditch, he immediately gives up.

"Have you met Al?" Rose says incredulously when Ginny points out the two used to be close to each other. "Of course I drove him away. He's always worrying or complaining about something, and he's so sensitive, and he doesn't try at anything, like he thinks it'll just be handed to him on a silver platter. Take Quidditch for example. I can't deal with that sort of person."

"His name is Albus, not Al," James reminds Rose, and she rolls her eyes before they share a laugh, while Ginny's gut twists.

Harry is changing, too. He's entirely focused on Albus. Teddy has stopped coming around the house, and Lily is reverting to her childhood self. The only time he pays attention to James is when James is misbehaving.

"Albus has it easy," James says bitterly, his lips twisting around the name. "Expectations? He doesn't know what it's like to be Harry Potter's first son."

"Why did you let him have your Invisibility Cloak?" Ginny asks.

James shrugs indifferently. "Because Dad would have given it to him eventually. Albus gets whatever he wants, right? Even Dad's love."

It is not until later that she sees any Slytherin traits in Albus; when Harry is actually proud of Albus after the disaster, Ginny looks at her husband, and realizes that in allowing Harry to almost exclusively raise Albus, she has turned them both into monsters. They might even be sociopaths at this point.

She was wrong to think that James is like Tom Riddle.

"Screw it!" James screams. "He can't even make it to my graduation? Well then to hell with him! I'm not going to let him ruin my life anymore."

Ginny grits her teeth. Both Harry and Albus were conspicuously missing from the ceremony. Harry got called into work for some sort of emergency, and Albus has been sulking ever since Rose and Scorpius started dating, when she realized the incident happened mostly due to Albus' hubris.

Lily's silently crying again. She's learned to hide her tears over the years.

"I can't do this anymore," Ginny whispers, and at that moment, she knows she's going to ask for a divorce.

AN: Inspired by:

GINNY looks at HARRY, unsure of what he's become.

SCORPIUS: Have you heard me, Albus? This is bigger than you and your dad.

The popular head-canon that James has black hair and brown eyes, like Tom Riddle.

AN2: Review? Especially if you hate it. I actually appreciate criticism, if it's constructive.

AN3: I really hated doing this to Harry and Ginny, but this follows their natural path. If you didn't see the preferential treatment in the Epilogue and CC, then we obviously didn't read the same books.

Also I've always seen James as the Slytherin in the family – and what better way to show it's a new era than James Sirius Potter in Slytherin? JKR missed out on an opportunity there.