"We agreed to keep it secret," James says quickly, as if that might actually help fix this. In reality, he has no idea what Harry wants to hear from him, and part of him wants to apologize, to say he's sorry, to promise that it'll never happen again, that he'll never talk to Scorpius again. But after today, after that- he can't. He just can't, can't do that to himself and can't do that to the other boy. "We agreed to keep it secret," he repeats, tongue-tied and anxious. "So just - it won't come back on you or mum for a while, and we can figure out how you want to handle it if anyone else finds out, if we decide to tell people, but that wouldn't be 'till he's out of school, at least..."

He takes a gulping breath. He can't help it: he's always been so quietly, quietly obsessed with living up to the Potter name that it's never occurred to him that maybe it's not as important as he thinks it is. "I can - there's other places for me to work, we don't have to tell the Ministry..."

James, in his rush of adrenaline, has leapt immediately to the worst case scenario: he is just assuming that Harry is going to full-on disown him.