"Keep her safe?" James volunteered. He would have been joking, if it weren't such a sick fucking joke. But really, he wasn't there to talk about his own failings. Or anyone's, really. Even if he had failed, so utterly, on that front. But had Lily ever really asked it of him? Probably not. It had been what he'd demanded of himself. And James was painfully unaccustomed to falling short.
But it was Harry they were focusing on. It was to his son that he wanted to direct his attention. So he grinned properly and said, "Or, for the better part of a decade, it seems, she kept asking me to leave her alone- a request I felt a bit bound to ignore. But the thing about women, Harry, the thing about wives and mothers... you do what they want. But sometimes, more important that that, you do what they need."
And it was impossible for James to not think of his own mother, how both he and his father had doted on her. The way they bent over backwards to make her happy. The way James's father had mentioned out of his mother's earshot that he'd left a bit of firewhiskey for James and Sirius tucked under one of the cupboard when the Potters had gone out of town.