"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." -Albert Einstein

James Potter was usually not one for premeditation.

At the age of three, he'd flown his toy broomstick straight out the door of his Godric's Hollow home and into the clear sights of many Muggles. (His mother had not been pleased. Nor had the Ministry, in fact.)

At the age of seven, he'd been testing out his magic and accidentally turned his cat a sickly shade of green. (His cat had not been pleased either.)

At the age of twelve, he, along with two of his roommates, started to train to become animagi to be with their fourth werewolf roommate on the full moon. (Remus had tried to pretend he was not pleased.)

At the age of fourteen, eleven months and twenty-eight days, he drank his first firewhiskey. (At the age of fourteen, eleven months and twenty-nine days, he had his first hangover. He was most definitely not pleased.)

At the age of sixteen, he received his fifty-seventh detention with pride. (Sirius was not at all pleased, having been only on his forty-third.)

So you see, sufficient forethought before action was not at all his thing. Yet, on the afternoon of September 27th, 1977, James wished deeply that premeditation was his thing, for he would probably be more resistant to putting himself in situations like his current one.

"Are you sure this will work, Padfoot?" James asked his friend, glancing at the door. He ran a hand through his dark hair. He had good reason to be nervous. If anyone saw them in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, there would be many questions to come upon them. Questions that he could not think of a logical answer to at the moment.

Sirius Black grinned at the Head Boy, tilting his head to the side in consideration. "Not at all. But what's life without a little risk, eh?" His grin only increased when James' brow furrowed at his words.

Remus Lupin paced hurriedly around the room, sighing as he had been doing every few minutes. "We're all being idiotic, you realize–" he started. This was one of the more common phrases he'd began, and just like most other protest he'd uttered on that day, it was cut off by the disinterested voice of Sirius Black.

"Relax, Moony, what's the worst that could happen?" asked Sirius, pushing his hair out of his eyes as he concentrated on the book in front of them.

They had been working on finding out a spell for time travel for quite some time now, as an experiment to see where they'd be at the end of the year, and Sirius had finally found one that could work. Sirius seemed to have utter confidence in the spell, but James and Remus were a bit more hesitant. Remus, because he was a realist and was aware of the consequences, James because he'd just become Head Boy and didn't want to give Dumbledore –or his partner for that matter– reason to think that the decision was wrong.

Remus gave Sirius a sceptical look, but kept quiet.

"It's going to work," said Peter, nodding to Sirius. "Padfoot is one of the top students in our year, he's an animagus for Christ's sake, have a little faith!"

"Not so loud," hissed Remus, his eyes darting to the door. It was not a well-known fact that there were three unregistered animagi running about once a month, considering the fact being unregistered was illegal. He raised his voice back to the normal level. "Faith, really, Wormtail? This is Sirius Black, the git whose top priority after graduation is to get a Muggle motorcycle rather than a job. If he's reckless enough to muck about with someone with a furry little problem once a month, he's certainly reckless to try a spell without having a damned clue whether it'll work."

Sirius rolled his eyes, too excited about the spell to pay his friend any heed. "C'mon, it's not going to bloody kill you to just try it out. I've done quite the bit of research and I reckon the spell is solid. So maybe we end up a month or two further than we intended, no big deal. The spell should wear off after about five minutes, and we'll be back here anyways."

James looked at him impatiently. "Can we just get the spell over with?" he grumbled, annoyed at himself for caring about whether or not they'd be caught.

Sirius took out his wand, looking over the text one last time before throwing the book in the corner and beginning. "Alius–"

Lily Evans, the current Head Girl walked through the doors. "I heard yelling, what are you lot doing in the girls' lavatories?–"

"–Vicis!" Sirius finished with a movement of his wand.

Suddenly, Moaning Myrtle's bathroom disappeared, and all five of them were on a dimly lit street. Wherever it was, James was certain it seemed very far from Hogwarts. And he couldn't help noticing that Lily looked incredibly pissed off.

Lily turned to Sirius with a burning look in her eyes. "What the hell did you do?" she asked, fury emanating from her.

Sirius donned a slightly worried, befuddled look, peering about the unfamiliar street. "It was supposed to be a time travel spell, to take us to the end of the year." he said confusedly. "I don't know why it transported us here,"

"Where d'you suppose we are?" asked James, glancing around.

Remus pointed towards a street sign. "According to that sign, Magnolia Crescent," He too looked very frustrated, probably trying to remember if he'd ever heard of such a place.

Lily frowned. "That's in Surrey! That means we're nowhere near Hogwarts!" she said in exasperation, throwing her hands up. She narrowed her eyes at James, and suddenly he felt two inches tall. "I gave you the benefit of the doubt for the past month, Potter, because you said you were going to take this job seriously. But you're not even trying, are you? The moment I put a little trust in you, you... do something like this," Her tone was not accusatory, it was disappointed, and that fact made James feel a thousand times worse.

"I have been trying, Evans– Lily, I have," James repeated, seeing the doubtful look on her face. "It's just, yeah, sometimes I do before I think and don't consider the consequences of screwing around with my mates, but I didn't mean for you to get involved, and I'm sorry that you did," He hated apologizing, but he knew at this point he owed her one, and he really was sorry. Though he had been her rival for the first four years of their schooling, in fifth year he'd fancied her. He ignored her as best he could throughout their sixth year, but he could not pretend that the feelings were gone, though he chose not to act on them anymore.

Lily sighed, a crease in her brow as she frowned even deeper. "It's not the fact you involved me in it, Potter, it's the fact you did it in the first place. There's a time and place for immaturity, and you don't seem to realize that."

Sirius gave the two Heads pointed looks. "Could you two please continue your lovers' spat some other time? The spell is supposed to have worn off by now, and it appears that it's not going to." He looked around. "There must be a wizard family somewhere in the area." He said, though James could hear in his tone that he wasn't confident. There was absolutely no way to make certain of that without stopping by at every house to ask, 'Hey, you wouldn't happen to be magical, would you?' (James had made that mistake once at the age of six, the neighbours were quite confused.)

James drew in a breath as he looked up. There was an enormous lady with a red face floating above one of the houses, several streets away. "I'm guessing if there is a magical family, they're in that one," he said, and though his nerves were still on edge, he managed a chuckle.

"No, really?" bit off Lily sarcastically.

They started to walk towards the house, when they saw a younger boy running towards the street they were on, owl cage in hand. Owls being the way that wizards communicated, it was obvious that this boy, at least, was magical. The black-haired boy collapsed, panting, on a low wall on Magnolia Crescent.

Sirius glanced at James, then back to the boy, and then once more at James. "That kid sort of looks like you, Prongs," he remarked thoughtfully.

All took a cautious step towards the boy, but luckily, they weren't in his line of vision yet. James peered at the boy intently, trying to get a better look at him. "Yeah, he does. He seems to be way younger, though, probably a second or third year,"

Remus looked contemplative. "Maybe, instead of travelling to the future, we travelled to the past." he suggested after a moment. With the clear similarities between the two, it seemed to the others that this could have very well been a younger James.

James reflected on his holidays during his second and third years, and shook his head. "That's impossible, Moony. I'm fairly certain never seen this street in my life. How can it be the past if it's something I haven't done?"

"Then is it just supposed to be a coincidence that the kid looks just like–" began Sirius. His expression shifted to a grin as he seemed to realize something. "I get it. I've figured it out now," he muttered with a knowing look.

"Get what?" asked Peter in confusion, "What have you figured out?"

Sirius looked at them incredulously, as if the answer was completely obvious. "Don't you understand?" he asked excitedly. "We are in the future. Just not the near future like we expected it to be. That's Prongs' son!"

They turned their gazes toward James, questions in everyone's eyes that he did not have the answers to. He shrugged helplessly. "It could be. How should I know who I've shagged years from now?" If it were indeed his child, that would mean that the house that woman was floating away from was his own, and probably also contained his future spouse. James hoped to Merlin that the floating woman wasn't her, she didn't seem at all his type. (Though his type was rather specific.)

He started to approach the boy out of curiosity, but Lily grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back. "Don't be an idiot!" she told him. "Bad things happen to wizards who meddle with time," she warned him.

James ignored her warning and kept walking toward his supposed 'son'. If he really did have a kid, he wanted to know about it. Surely if he did, he would have told his son about this whole time travelling endeavour he'd had, wouldn't he?

James tapped the boy on the shoulder. The younger person turned, startled. Looking closely, James could see what Sirius had meant. It was like looking at a live picture of him in third year. They had the same face almost exactly, though James' nose was a bit longer and James was slightly tanner than the boy in front of him. James, being seventeen, was also much taller than the boy. Also, the spectacles around the boy's eyes were round, not square like his own. And the kid's eyes, they were a brilliant green that instantly reminded James of Lily.

"Who are–" started the child. Then he drew his wand and pointed it at James' throat, a dark look in his eyes. "Do you think you're funny?"

James was as startled as the boy had been a few moments ago. "No, I'm James Potter and –"

The boy stood up, hatred flashing into his eyes. "You're mocking me. If you don't think I'm aware that my father's been dead for the past twelve years–"

Dead for the past twelve years. Those words pounded in James' ears and his eyes widened, his brain starting to take in what the boy had just said. "Wait, your father's name is James Potter... and he's dead?" he asked in a strangled voice. His heart thudded loudly as he panicked. He wasn't... he couldn't be...

Sirius marched forward, possibly sensing the panic in James by seeing his rigid form, or perhaps just seeing the boy's drawn wand. Remus and Peter followed, and very reluctantly, Lily trailed behind them until all of the others were standing along with James.

The boy turned to Lily and his eyes –eyes that James couldn't help noticing were indeed the exact same shade of green as Lily's– softened slightly, but also swirled with confusion. He lowered his wand and looked between James and her. "Mum? Are you – What's going on?" he asked. "You say your name is James Potter, and you look like my mum and dad, but I know by now that they've been dead since before I can remember! Someone better tell me what the bloody hell is going on, because if this is a joke I'll–"

Lily' eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "I-I look like your w-what?" she stuttered, looking as if she might faint.

James felt dizzy. The look on that boy's face –his bloody son's face– was enough to prove that he believed Lily was his mother. His mother. Meaning, James's future effing wife. So he'd finally gotten together with Lily and married the girl and had a freaking kid and then they'd gone and died? He was nauseous and wasn't sure whether he was going to fall over or get sick on the pavement first.

The boy glanced around at everyone, hurt and uncertainty prominent in his face. "Will someone please explain what's going on?" he asked desperately, running a hand through his hair. It made the child look so much like James that James was seconds away from collapsing. It was only his urge to know the truth which kept him conscious.

Lily looked at him, looking more vulnerable than any of the others had seen her. "I don't know what's going on," she told the kid truthfully, "Can you tell us what your name is, and what day it is?" she asked him. "A bit of background information on your parents would help as well."

He looked torn as to whether to trust them, but then sighed and said, "My name is Harry James Potter. It's August 3rd, 1993." he told them. "My parents were Lily and James Potter, and they died in 1981 because Voldemort came after me and they wanted to save me." Harry swallowed, and this gave James a moment to think.

Lord Voldemort had been on the rise since the five seventeen-year-olds had started Hogwarts. He was prejudiced against Muggles, and Muggle-borns. Unlike most others with this view, he took to Muggle slayings and targeted anyone who stood in his way, Muggles, and half-bloods and purebloods alike. Even those with wizarding ancestry dating back centuries were not safe if they were considered 'blood-traitors'. He had a larger following than anyone since Grindelwald's time, his supporters called 'Death Eaters' and the fear he struck into the wizarding world was such that hardly anyone dared utter his name anymore. The attacks had been getting more and more frequent over the past few months. However, Lily and the Marauders for the most part were not afraid to call him Voldemort.

Harry went on. "Somehow, I survived the killing curse and it rebounded against him, leaving me with a scar on my forehead." He seemed to pause in thought. "I have a picture of my parents in my trunk!"

He turned away and opened his case, rifling through it for a while. Soon, he pulled out a framed picture and handed it to James. His breath caught in his throat as he looked at it. It was Lily and him, maybe a year or so older than they were at that point, twirling around in a bevy of falling leaves. James had his arms wrapped around her as they half-danced in the picture. They were laughing, and they looked so goddamn happy. It set off a pang in James' chest. He handed it wordlessly to Lily.

Lily's hands trembled as she held the photo, shaking her head in disbelief. "Impossible," she said softly, looking puzzled. "I don't understand this. I've barely talked to Potter since fifth year, and now all we talk about is Head duties. We've never gotten along, and we're supposed to have gotten married,"

Harry looked surprised. "You've never gotten along? Whenever people talk about you two, they make you sound like you loved each other more than anything. They talk about you together, never apart. It's always Lily and James, as if you were one person." He paused, smiling. "Except when they're telling me I look exactly like my dad, but with my mother's eyes. Not that I would really know, since I've only seen you in a few pictures until now. I don't really remember you much,"

Lily's eyes seemed a tad shiny. He thought maybe his eyes were watery as well, as much as he didn't want to admit it. It felt like his heart had just swollen a hundred times its size for a moment, before shattering completely. He found out he got to be with Lily. He would get to marry her and call her his and she would have his child that would have her beautiful green, green eyes. And hell, though he was just seventeen, he could see himself wanting it, loving every minute. But they would die. They would die –be murdered– young, just twenty-one, leaving their baby with her green, green eyes an orphan.

He had never hated Voldemort so much than in that instant.

"So, will someone please tell me who the others are and how in the world you got here?" Harry asked.

There were several mumbled introductions, and after that, the Marauders all cast a glance at Sirius for the explanation. "That would be my fault," said Sirius, raising a hand. "We were trying to time travel to the end of the year, to see what we'd be like, but the spell I cast sent us sixteen years in the future!" He was deep in thought for an instant. "Do you recognize me?" he asked slowly.

Harry shook his head. "Not really, should I?" he inquired, his eyebrows pulling together.

Sirius quirked his mouth to the side before he spoke, "I just thought that, maybe if James and Evans were no longer alive..." His tone grew a bit saddened, "That maybe, maybe you'd be living with me, or something. I'm James' best friend, so isn't there a possibility I'm the godfather?" He looked to James.

James nodded immediately. "Absolutely. I'd trust with my life, mate. I had to have made you godfather. Maybe... I dunno, maybe you don't live here or something?" suggested James. "Maybe you have to live somewhere else, and that wouldn't allow Harry to live with you, so he has to live with other relatives?"

"Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and my cousin, Dudley, are my only living relatives," said Harry. James didn't have any siblings, so he knew that this Petunia must have been Evans' sister, so he turned to watch her reaction.

Lily looked a bit angry. "You live with Petunia? How does she treat you?" she questioned rapidly. She seemed to know that she should offer James some sort of explanation for her response, considering it concerned their son. She looked at him. "Petunia and I don't talk much. She hates magic, and almost everything involved with it, myself included."

Harry looked a bit stony. "She hasn't changed," he mumbled with a frown. "They've never really treated me like much of a person. They were alright with me before the magic started; they thought they'd squashed it out of me. But when strange things started to happen, they treated me even worse. 'Course, I had no idea why these things were happening, since I didn't know I was a wizard until I was eleven. They hid my Hogwarts letter from me at first,"

"What?" said James, outraged. He was starting to hate this Petunia woman, not only for hating Lily, but also for treating his son like dirt and keeping him from the world in which he belonged.

Harry shrugged, as if he were accustomed to that sort of treatment. (Inside, James' temper flared, because damn it, that wasn't the sort of treatment his kid should have to become used to,) "The owls just kept on coming though, so they moved. Of course, on my birthday, Hagrid found us." Harry paused briefly and grinned. "He gave Dudley a tail, told me I was a wizard, and then took me away on a flying motorcycle."

James shook his head, for the first time since this conversation started, allowing himself to smile. "Gotta love that Hagrid," he murmured to himself, shaking his head. "Er, I don't mean to change the subject, but would you mind telling us who the floating woman was?"

Harry shook his head. "Aunt Marge. Well, she's not my real aunt, obviously, since I don't have any other living relatives. Aunt Marge is my Uncle Vernon's sister. I sort of accidentally blew her up..."

At Harry's words, the Marauders all burst out into laughter. Their laughter was slightly strained from their sadness and stress, but it was there, and it felt good to laugh. "Sort of... accidentally... blew her up?" asked Sirius through an abundance of laughter. "Merlin, you're more like your dad than you know,"

"Oi!" protested James. "The woman I blew up wasn't my aunt! She was one of Mum's socialite friends. How can I be expected to sit through years and years of pinched cheeks, pats on the head and 'Oh, aren't you just darling?' without cracking once?" he said, chuckling. "I was only thirteen anyway! But suffice to say, Mrs. Freemont doesn't come by when I'm home for the hols," he added to the additional laughter of his friends.

As the boys' laughter began to die down, Lily spoke to Harry. "So you're going to be in your third year at Hogwarts? What happened after Hagrid came and got you?"

He nodded. "Hagrid took me to Diagon Alley, and brought me to Gringotts to get wizard money from my vault. He got something from another vault, a small package that was empty, bar the item. Said it was Hogwarts business. Turns out that later on someone tried to steal from that very vault after it was emptied."

"This thief must've been clever, no one's ever been able to break into Gringotts, it's the safest place in the world besides Hogwarts." said Remus with a frown. The others nodded, including Harry.

Sirius and James, both having spent their fair share of time in Gringotts, exchanged a look. "Enter, stranger, but take heed, of what awaits the sin of greed," recited Sirius.

James continued where Sirius left off. "For those who take, but do not earn, must pay most dearly in their turn."

"So if you seek beneath our floors, a treasure that was never yours,"

"Thief, you have been warned, beware, of finding more than treasure there."

Both Lily and Remus had their eyebrows raised. "Should I be worried that you two have the entire Gringotts warning message memorized?" asked the former.

"Extremely," Sirius smirked, as James responded, "I've spent a lot of time in Gringotts. What else am I supposed to do while Dad goes to withdraw money?"

Peter muttered, "I've probably spent just as much time in there as the two of you, and I've never seen fit to memorize a poem. You're such girls." (Here, Sirius mumbled something about Peter 'not having enough of a brain to understand the poem, anyway') Peter pointedly ignored this remark and said, "What happened next, Harry?"

"Hagrid helped me find all my school stuff, but I felt pretty confused, especially with all the staring. You see, since I didn't know about magic, I hadn't known about you being killed by Voldemort and how I was the only one to survive. The Dursleys told me you died in a car crash." Harry explained.

"Just like Petunia," said Lily with a frown. "To lie about what happened, just so she wouldn't be associated with a 'freak'."

"On the day the train was leaving, Hagrid told me to go to platform 9 and ¾. I could only see platforms 9 and 10, so I asked someone who worked there. He was a Muggle, so of course he thought I was mad. I saw a family of redheads with owls and everything, so I asked them. Their mum, Mrs. Weasley, helped me get through. That day I met one of my best friends, Ron. As well as my other best friend, Hermione, though we didn't really become that great of friends until Ron and I saved her from a troll..."

"Saved her from a what-now?" James asked incredulously. There was no way he could believe that. Two first years, take on a full-grown troll? Impossible. (But then again, it was his son. He probably should've stopped being surprised at these sorts of things.)

Harry grinned. "A troll. That's a story for another time though. In my first year, most people thought that Voldemort was dead. But really, he was in hiding, living –if you could call it that– on the body of someone else, a professor at our school. He was hunting unicorns and wanted to find the something to keep him alive, but we didn't know that 'til a bit later on. We stumbled upon Fluffy, Hagrid's three-headed dog one night, and we knew he was protecting something, but we didn't know what. We sort of figured it must've been that package Hagrid got from the vault. We asked Hagrid, and he let it slip that it was between Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel,"

"Nicholas Flamel," intoned Lily. "That's the co-creator of the philosopher's stone! That was what Voldemort was after, wasn't it?"

Harry smiled at her. "Yes, it was. We checked out the library, but couldn't find anything with Nicholas Flamel in it. So we checked in the restricted section," Harry ducked his head as Lily gave him a reprimanding look. "We wanted to know. I used my dad's invisibility cloak to get there without anyone seeing –"

Lily blurted, "Your dad's what?" at the same time Sirius said, "Prongs! Do you have it with you?"

James looked at Lily, deciding it was alright to tell her about it now that Harry had let the secret out that it existed. "I have an invisibility cloak. It's been passed down through my family for generations, and yes, that's part of the reason we get away with much more than we should," he added with a grin. Next he addressed his friend's inquiry. "Yeah, Padfoot, I have it," He drew the cloak out of his robes. It was a Hogsmeade weekend, so they'd not come dressed in their uniforms, but they were all still wearing wizard's –or in Lily's case, witch's– robes. He put it back into his pocket.

"That's all lovely, but I'd like to hear the rest of the story, if you don't mind," said Remus with slight irritation.

Harry took a breath before continuing. "So we still couldn't find it in the restricted section, when Hermione remembered seeing it in a book. We found about the philosopher's stone. I'll give you a briefer version and just skip the part where we try and stop the stone from being stolen. We had to get past Fluffy, Devil's Snare, a room full of flying keys and a giant chessboard, where Ron and Hermione told me to continue on my own.

"Soon, I was face to face with Voldemort, or rather, him and the professor he was living of off. Voldemort approached me, casting a ring of fire around us, so no one could get in or out. He offered for us to rule together, which I refused. He kept asking me where the stone was, and I said I didn't know, and I truly didn't. Then, I looked at the Mirror of the Erised which shows you want you want most. I'd looked in it before. I usually, saw myself, with a family." Harry's eyes were downcast for a moment.

Lily looked at Harry for a moment before drawing him in for a hug. "Oh, Harry..."

Harry took a deep breath and drew away from his mother, (His bloody seventeen-year-old mum, thought James) bringing his gaze back up and continuing the story. "Instead of seeing my parents, I saw me, with the stone in my pocket. I looked in my pocket, and there it was. He tried to grab it, and I dropped it, flinging it a few feet away. We both scrambled for it, and when Quirrel, the teacher that Voldemort was living on, reached for it, I pushed his face away. His face shattered as if it were made of stone. I passed out.

"When I woke up, I was in the hospital wing, surrounded by gifts and candy. I was informed by Dumbledore that we lost the Quidditch cup, and I felt pretty horrible, since I was Seeker. But we did win the house cup. He told me the stone was destroyed."

They looked at him in amazement. "And that was only your first year?" asked Peter in shock.

James beamed proudly at Harry. "You made Seeker first year? You must be the youngest player for a house team in over a century. That's my boy." He patted his son on the back. He was still getting used to the idea he had a son, even if it wasn't for a while, let alone one almost his age, but he couldn't contain his excitement at Harry's position on the team.

"Was your second year that mad?" asked Remus interestedly.

Harry took another deep breath and shot off into his explanation. "As far as I knew, I didn't get any letters from my friends over the summer. My uncle's boss and his wife stopped over for dinner. That same night a house elf apparated into house and tried to convince me not to go back to Hogwarts, saying it wasn't safe. He was the one who was hiding the letters from my friends.

"I argued with him, and then he levitated a pudding bowl and dropped it on Vernon's boss's wife in an attempt to get me expelled. The ministry just knew magic was being performed, they didn't know it wasn't me. I got an official warning. The Dursleys had me locked up in my room from then on. They separated me from all my school things. Ron and his older twin brothers, Fred and George, came to rescue me in their dad's flying car." He said with a grin.

"Your stories have a lot of flying vehicles in them, don't they?" Sirius commented, lips twitching. "Though I fancy the idea of having that flying motorbike you mentioned earlier on, myself."

Harry laughed. "Yes, I suppose they do have a lot of flying vehicles. Or, at least more than other people's stories. We flew to Ron's house and I stayed there for the rest of the summer. We went to Diagon Alley, and saw Gilderoy Lockhart at book signing."

"Gilderoy Lockhart?" interrupted Sirius, wrinkling his nose. "I have Herbology with him. What a flake. It's hard to believe he'd have the ability to write a book, much less one that people would actually read,"

James, Peter, Remus and Lily all shot Sirius disapproving looks for interrupting the story again. "Sorry." muttered Sirius sheepishly. He looked at Harry. "Continue."

Harry rolled his eyes, but went on. "As I was saying, we saw Gilderoy Lockhart signing books, and then we found out he was to be our Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. He wanted to take pictures with me for the Daily Prophet, but I didn't want to, though that didn't stop him. When Ron and I were at the barrier, we couldn't get through. We found out later that Dobby, the house elf from before, had sealed it. The train was leaving without us, so we had to find another way to get to Hogwarts. We kinda... stole Ron's dad's car." he mumbled in a rush.

In the silence, the older teens could only gape at him. James was the first one to snap out of it. "I don't know whether I'm impressed, jealous, concerned or confused," said James in mystification, "Possibly all of the above!"

"You stole... a car." Lily said, looking horrified. "At the age of... twelve? Oh dear Merlin, what have Potter's genes done to you?"

James frowned. "Why do you assume it's my genes?" (Though she was probably right.)

She frowned back at him. "Because you've given me no reason to expect otherwise, and every reason to doubt you."

Harry seemed to sense the tension between his parents and hurried on with the story. "We flew it to Hogwarts, but we hit the Whomping Willow. We were tossed around everywhere, and thought we were going to get expelled. Professor Snape wanted to, but Dumbledore wouldn't let him.

"At school strange things started to happen. I started hear voices and then Filch's cat was petrified, next to a sign that appeared to written in blood saying, 'The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware'. The chamber of secrets was supposed to be a secret place in Hogwarts where Slytherin hid his monster. More people were petrified, and Snape and Lockhart started a duelling club. Draco Malfoy and I had to go first. We were only supposed to disarm each other, but he didn't follow the rules, so I didn't either. He conjured up a snake and the snake tried to attack one of the students. I had talked to a snake the summer before first year, and I accidentally set it loose on my cousin." he admitted, caught between grinning and looking guilty.

"You set a snake loose on your cousin." stated Lily, eyes wide. She appeared to have lost the will to admonish him at this point.

"You're a Parselmouth?" James questioned, unsettled. Speaking Parseltongue was a quality that only dark wizards tended to have. Salazar Slytherin himself, founder of Slytherin house, spoke it. Rumour was Voldemort might have even possessed that quality. To hear that his own child had that very power disturbed him deeply.

"Er, yes to both. So I told the snake to back off, not realizing I was speaking in Parseltongue. All the people around me only heard hissing, and thought I was egging it on. Since I could speak to snakes, everyone thought I was Slytherin's heir, and that I was the one who was petrifying people.

"I found a diary that said Tom Riddle on the front. I looked inside, but it was empty. I wrote in it, and it wrote back. I asked it about the Chamber of Secrets, and it said it couldn't tell me anything, but it could show me. It pulled me into the memory of Tom Riddle, when he was at school. He was a prefect and was trying to find out who opened the Chamber. No one could see or hear me in the memory. A girl had died, so Riddle cornered Hagrid, and said that he was going to turn him in. Hagrid said his creature didn't do it, but Riddle didn't believe him. Riddle turned him in, and Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts."

"That's bull!" said Sirius heatedly. "Hagrid would never set any creature upon someone else. He wouldn't!"

Peter nodded fervently. "Hagrid's a great bloke; he wouldn't do a thing like that."

"Never," agreed James.

"While I agree with you all that Hagrid is a good bloke, don't you think that we should let Harry tell us the rest of the story?" inquired Remus, raising an eyebrow. All nodded their consent, and put their defences of Hagrid aside for the moment.

Harry continued where he'd left off. "Ron and I were visiting Hagrid when ministry officials came. Ron, Hermione and I all believed that Hagrid was innocent. The Minister for Magic made Hagrid go to Azkaban. Ron and I were hiding under the invisibility cloak and Hagrid gave us a message. We were supposed to follow the spiders. Ron's terrified of spiders, so obviously, he wasn't exactly thrilled, but we did follow them. We followed the spiders right into the Forbidden Forest, where we met Hagrid's giant talking spider, Aragog. He talked to us and told us he wasn't Slytherin's monster. He didn't do anything to harm us up 'til that point. But then he said that he could not deny his children food that wandered willingly there, and his children came after us. We ran and ran, and found Ron's dad's car in the forest. We got in and drove towards the school, all the spiders chasing after us. We got out the forest in one piece, which was basically a miracle. The car drove itself back into the forest.

"Hermione was doing research on the monster when she got petrified. Ron and I found a piece of paper in her hand talking about basilisks. They are giant snakes that can kill with one stare. It didn't make much sense at first, because no one had died. But then we realized that no one had looked at it. They all only saw its reflection. Then we were kinda wondering how it was going around the school unnoticed, but Hermione wrote down the answer to that too. It was travelling around in the pipes. We soon realized the girl who'd died the last time the chamber was open was Moaning Myrtle."

Sirius looked shocked. "So that's how Moaning Myrtle died? I always thought that it was something sexual, you know? Moaning Myrtle? I mean really, a name like that can give you a reputation,"

"Gross, Padfoot!" Remus said, smacking Sirius on the back of the head. "We do not need to hear things like that!"

Harry continued as if Sirius had not interjected with that unnecessary information. "Ron's sister was taken into the Chamber, and Lockhart was bragging about how he had known where the Chamber was all along, so the professors told him to find Ginny and save her. We overheard this and decided to go to Lockhart to help him. The coward he was, when we walked in he was packing. We told him we knew where the chamber was and he wanted to run away.

"We went down to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and found a sink with a snake engraved on it. I opened it by speaking Parseltongue, and the whole sink disappeared into the ground. We went down the shaft, landing underground. We had disarmed Lockhart, so he could hardly object to coming, while we were the ones with the wands.

"There was a cave-in, and Ron and Lockhart were trapped on one side and I was on the other. I saw Ron's sister Ginny, lying on the floor, seemingly dead or unconscious. I rushed over to her to see if she was still alive. Tom Riddle appeared in the chamber. I warned him about the Basilisk.

"Riddle seemed amused, and said the creature would not come unless he willed it. He proceeded to explain that he was the sixteen-year-old Voldemort."

"V-V-Voldemort survived the incident in first year, then?" asked Peter fearfully.

"Dumbledore thought so, when I'd asked him. He thought that Voldemort was just incredibly weak, and couldn't fend for himself at that point so he wasn't going to come after me anytime soon. And anyway, this wasn't really him, more like a projection of him. Riddle was cruel and told me how he had had been controlling Ginny through the diary, how he'd made her open up the chamber and write those things on the walls, and how she didn't remember doing it, but she had suspected the diary and tried to destroy it.

"He set the basilisk on me, and I squeezed my eyes shut and ran. After a while, Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix, came and blinded it so it could no longer kill with a single stare, and couldn't see my body heat. Riddle was angry but still said that the creature could hear me. The Basilisk bit me, poisoning me. Fawkes healed me with his tears and delivered the sorting hat. Out of the sorting hat I pulled the sword of Godric Gryffindor. I killed the Basilisk with it. I had pulled out a basilisk fang out of my arm and used it to stab the diary. The diary bled ink like it was blood, and as I stabbed the diary, Riddle seemed to be dying as well. Soon he was gone.

"I rescued Ginny and went to go get Ron. I pushed rocks out of the way and made it to the other side. Lockhart got hold of Ron's wand, which had broken earlier that year. He revealed that none of his supposed accomplishments were true, and that he had found out who achieved the accomplishments and how, then preformed memory charms on the people who actually made the breakthroughs. He said that he was going to do that to us and got ready to perform the spell. But Ron's malfunctioning wand made the spell bounce back onto him, erasing his memory.

"Again, I ended up in the hospital wing. The Quidditch cup wasn't handed out, due to the whole Chamber of Secrets ordeal. I found out that Lucius Malfoy was the one who had slipped Ginny the diary. Dobby was his house elf, and Dobby disobeyed his orders to try and save me, and he had to punish himself for it. I was very grateful to him. I handed Malfoy the diary, with one of my socks folded in it. Malfoy shoved the diary at Dobby and Dobby opened it to find my sock. Malfoy had handed him clothing, so that meant he was free. Malfoy wasn't too happy with me for that, but now Dobby's a free elf."

James looked at him, unsure of how to react now that the story seemed over. "Gee, that's all?" he deadpanned.

Harry grinned. "I also lost all the bones in my right arm during a Quidditch match due to a rogue bludger, and my mates and I brewed polyjuice potion to go down to the Slytherin common room to spy on Malfoy."

Sirius looked at his best friend's son in amazement. "He's worse than us. Or better, depending on how you look at it."

"Merlin," Lily muttered. "You've been through a lot."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, I have." he said simply.

Sirius looked at Harry. "There are a few things I want explained. What do you mean about Snape? Don't tell me that git is a teacher!" He looked at James. "And I still want to know why I'm not with Harry if you guys aren't. Are you sure you've never seen me before?" he asked Harry.

Harry surveyed him closely, trying to remember if he'd ever met Sirius. "Not that I remember..." said Harry, "Wait... you do kind of look like someone in a few of the pictures I have..." He turned back to his trunk and stuck a hand in it again. He pulled out a photo album. On the cover, it at had a picture of James and Lily holding a baby Harry.

All five of them crowded around Harry, trying to get a closer look. James and Lily were the closest to him, so they got the best view of the pictures. Harry opened the book and what was on the first page had all of them gasping. It was a picture of what looked like Evans' and James' wedding. James was wearing black dress robes and Evans was wearing a flowing white dress and they were smiling bigger than they ever thought they'd had when James leaned in and pulled her into a kiss. To the side, Sirius and Remus could be seen standing next to James, opposite two unknown bridesmaids. James supposed Peter was the one who would've took the picture.

Harry pointed to Sirius in the picture. "The best man in the wedding. That looks a bit like you, except older,"

Sirius tried to lean past James and Evans to get a better look. "That is me!" He looked directly at James and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You made me best man!" he said excitedly, smiling.

James grinned to himself a bit, but couldn't get himself to take his eyes off the book. Harry flipped through the next few pages. There were pictures of the two at Hogwarts next. There was a picture from graduation that showed Lily with the Marauders, there was one where James Lily were just smiling widely at each other, another with James in the lake and Lily laughing very hard, and a few where James would hold her to him tightly.

Lily turned away. "I can't look at this anymore," she murmured, shaking her head.

"Nor can I," James agreed. This was playing havoc on his heart, seeing glimpses of what he could have, but knowing that he would lose it all soon after he got it.

"We still have problems," Lily said, probably trying to change the subject, which James welcomed gratefully. "We still need a place to go and we need to get back to our time before we damage the future more than we already have." Her words made them all realize their situation again.

"How about Diagon Alley?" James suggested. "We can go there and get rooms at the Leaky Cauldron and figure out what do about the whole being in the future with no way to get back thing,"

"How are we supposed to get there without attracting attention, Potter?" Lily asked. "You and I are supposed to be dead, we don't even know about the futures of Black, Pettigrew and Remus yet, and we bloody well are definitely hard to miss!"

Sirius spoke. "We could apparate, I suppose," he said with a shrug.

Lily shook her head. "No we couldn't. Harry still has the trace on him, and as far as the Ministry knows he's the only wizard in the area! He'd not only get into more trouble than he already is in, but we'd get discovered and disrupt the future terribly!"

"Well, about that," Remus began, "I was thinking, it wouldn't disrupt the future as badly if people didn't know who we were, right? So why don't we put on some glamours before heading off anywhere,"

"But wouldn't that also be magic?" asked Peter. It was a surprisingly good and relevant question coming from him.

James swore under his breath, hating this dilemma. They couldn't use magic around Harry, but they needed magic if they didn't want to be seen. If we don't want to be seen... thought James, and the answer hit him like a ton of bricks. "Harry, do you still have the invisibility cloak that you talked about?"

"Yeah, it's in my trunk," he said, reaching into his trunk yet again. He pulled out the silvery material.

"Prongs, may I speak to you for a moment," said Sirius quietly. James started to walk over, but Sirius jerked his head in the direction of a spot a little ways away from the rest of the group. "Over there," he whispered once James was closer.

The two boys marched over to the spot which was no longer in hearing distance of the rest of them. Even so, Sirius spoke in a whisper. "Prongs, what you're thinking won't work."

James frowned. "Why not?"

Sirius sighed. "Because, there's not enough room for five people, even with two cloaks. And we can't do what we usually do when we have this problem because then we'd have to let Evans in on our little secret. As much as I like the chick, we can't jeopardize that."

"Evans isn't that tall, I'm sure if we divided the people as evenly as possibly she'd fit... You can go with Moony, since you're pretty big and he's pretty small... Evans can go with Wormtail since he's rather round and she's... not," James said, trying to work it out mentally.

"What about you, Prongs?" asked Sirius sceptically. "You're fairly big, where're you supposed to go?"

"Er, I can pretend to that I'm Harry and I've had a real growth spurt?" he suggested jokingly, trying to lighten the mood. He sighed when Sirius' stern expression did not change in the least. "We can do magic as soon as we're in Diagon Alley, there will be other wizards there,"

Sirius huffed in frustration. "Damn it, Prongs, I just don't think I'm willing to risk it. You should go under the cloak with Moony, not me. At least as far as we know I'm not, you know... dead," he finished quietly, eyes downcast. James could see from his friend's expression that the fact he was indeed no longer alive in a few years time was something hard for him to deal with.

"Padfoot..."

"Please, James. Just stay under the cloak."

James sighed deeply, and nodded. They walked back towards the others, who had puzzled expressions on their faces. "Here's the plan," started James. "The way we'll stay hidden is that Evans and Pete can go under Harry's cloak, and Remus and I will go under mine while Sirius stays visible with Harry, pretending to be one of Sirius' many cousins or something of the like," He was very unwilling to go along with this plan, but the look on Sirius's face made him agree with him to appease his mate.

"Um, I've got a question about this plan of yours," said Lily.

"What?"

She looked bemused and cautious. "You've not exactly explained how we're to get to London without using magic."

Sirius let out a bark of a laugh. "Well, that's the easy part of all this, 'innit? We'll use the Knight Bus."

A/N: Changed this story, a lot. I don't know if you'll like it, but personally, I enjoy it this version much more. I'm going to do this with the other chapters of this story, just so you know. My plan is for the story to third person following James, though that may change as the story goes on. Disclaim. It's JKR's. Oh, and I have an alternate title, too, if you like. "Mischief Unmanageable." Drop me a line if you have comments/questions/suggestions.