Harry watched Neville struggle with putting her thoughts into words and he didn't envy the block at all. "It is different," Harry agreed. Yes, their parents were alive and well. They got to see them on this Island every day, but no matter how much time they spent together there was still a gap unable to be bridged. Had they been younger, it might have been easier to adapt to the change.
And Harry was sure it wasn't just on his and Neville's end. "I can see it sometimes, when I talk to them," he stared stiring the spoon idly in his cup of coffee. He could see the missed opportunities, the regret just as easily in their eyes as he could feel in his own, "a certain distance. They feel the gap just as much as we do and, honestly, I don't know if that will ever go away but I also don't think that they'll love us less than they might love a second child. We're never going to have the same sort of connection that they might have with another child, that's just fact."
It was a harsh truth, he knew. Harry felt it settle into him just as it must be to Neville. "But that doesn't mean we can't have a relationship with them, right? We just have to make one suited to us and our situation. It's different but I doesn't have to be less." If he was honest with himself, this reminded him more of Teddy and himself than himself and his parents. He had the unique opportunity to be on both sides of this coin.He knew Teddy had felt similar when Jamie had come along, thinking he and Ginny no longer had any room for him.
He pushed down the flash of anger that rose inside of him when his thoughts drifted to Teddy and the recent events. "I don't think any of us really know what we're doing," he commented, familiar green eyes lifting up from the cup ahead of him to meet Neville's. "We're only now learning to even be sons."