Thanks for all the alerts and favorites, I wasn't intending for this to be a serious story, just one of my many side projects but you have convinced me to put it on the front burner. Mostly the idea for this came from reading a lot of Next Generation time travel stories with the kids as teenagers, or James or Rose, I always thought it would be more interesting to have them deal with a very young child (with the added bonus that they won't recognize people and information blurting won't seem as strange and forced as it does coming from an older child.) I might have some of the other children go back as well but I always get irritated when I read a story where more than two or three kids time travel. Again, thanks for reading.
Christmas Eve 1980
The present members of the Order of the Phoenix were enjoying one of the most restful meetings they could remember. True the world was rapidly descending into chaos, but the Death Eaters seemed to have developed a sense of Christmas spirit and as a result there had been no major attacks in recent weeks.
The Order meeting was being held in the Potter family home as they had ample space and new mother Lily Potter wanted to be involved as much as she wanted to stay near her young son. Her good friends the Longbottoms had brought their son, Neville, as well and the meeting soon dissolved into a much more festive atmosphere with guests admiring the two boys and imbibing some in between sporadic "serious talk". It was shaping up to be quite the Christmas party. That is until the screaming toddler arrived in a swirl of fog.
She stopped howling suddenly when she softly landed and found herself surrounded by strangers. She looked around with wide eyes and her breathing became erratic as she opened her mouth as if to begin crying once more. Instead she surprised those present by softly whimpering a single word.
"Mummy?" she asked uncertainly, slowly backing herself toward the nearest wall. When she received no answer she asked again louder. "Mummy?" Then looking directly at Sirius she asked quite firmly, "Where did they go?"
"Where did who go?" Alice asked slowly approaching the girl. Alice was acting on instinct having always been a maternal sort of person.
"Freddy and Jake were bein' bad," the girl said instead. "I saw them. They did a no-no." Sirius glanced toward Remus who had found his way to his side. He had no idea who Freddy and Jake were, but given the current state of the world he couldn't be sure what kind of bad their "no-no" was.
"What did Freddy and Jake do?" Sirius asked abruptly before he could stop himself.
"They took Aunty's time dust for their potion! They was hidin' in the attic and Teddy was 'posed to be watchin' us. But Jamie and Al was bein' mean so I hided in the attic and I saw them. They was bad. Where Mummy?"
"We don't know," James told the girl gingerly. He could not explain it, but he felt inexplicably responsible for this child. "Can you tell us your name? Maybe someone here knows your parents." The girl didn't seem to have really taken in the vast number of people around her, but her head jerked in surprise at James' voice and she ran toward him so quickly, he almost didn't catch her when she jumped into his arms.
"Daddy! Daddy they was bein' mean. You told them to play nice, you did, I heared you. They wasn't being good brothers at all." She stuck her thumb in her mouth and looked around the room with wide eyes. "You not Daddy," she pronounced after a moment. "Why do you look like Daddy?"
"You have five brothers?" Sirius asked with surprise, goggling James as he tallied the number of names. Meanwhile Lily was unraveling the girl's last statement. James had no really close relatives, so how could he have resembled this other man closely enough that a child mistook him for her own father?
"No!" The girl pronounced as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I only got two brothers, Jamie and Al. The twins are cousins. Teddy's our god brother and he's the best."
"You still haven't told us your name," Remus prodded gently even as his eyebrows rose at the mention of the girl's brother.
"Oh, I'm Lily Luna. But everybody knows that. Mummy says none of us will ever have to inner-deuce ourselves, 'cause you can reckon-ice a Potter a mile away. Where is Mummy?" The girl – Lily – asked again this time craning her neck to look at everybody in the room. There, near where Alice had been standing was Marlene but Lily looked past her quickly, her gaze also flitted over Emmaline and two of the other present women. Her lip quavered as she realized she couldn't recognize a single person in the room.
"Are you strangers? Daddy says I'm not s'posed to talk to strangers."
"Oh boy," someone groaned though James couldn't quite tell who. It was as those present were digesting this new information and realizing how dire the situation really was that another swirling cloud of fog appeared at the exact spot where Lily had materialized a few minutes before.
As this puff cleared a gangly teenage boy could be seen staring about him with wide eyes. The boy was still short though long arms and legs hinted at a tall man to come. Most peculiarly, the boy had long disheveled hair that rapidly changed colors between blue, black, and orange at an alarming rate. He spun quickly pulling a wand from his pocket as he did so and calmed only when he saw Lily hanging on James' arm. Despite relaxing, his grip on his wand did not loosen nor did he lower his arm. "Leelee, are you okay?" He called just loudly enough to be heard but his voice was steady and reassuring. At James' urging, Lily moved quickly toward the boy and grinned.
"Got you?" She asked and wrapped her hand around two fingers on his left hand. At her touch his hair settled in a more tranquil shade a blue.
"Yeah, you got me good. Don't ever do it again," The boy told her as he gave her a one armed hug. He straightened then addressed the room. "Just what are you playing at?"
"What do you mean what are we playing at?" Gideon Prewett demanded hotly, speaking for the first time. "Here we are minding our own business when a midget banshee that no one has ever seen before shows up out of nowhere crying for her mother! Just what the hell do you think you're playing at?"
"Gid!" Fabian the calmer of the two scolded he had spent much more time with his nephews than his brother had and knew what raised voices and tension did to an already upset child.
"Yeah, maybe you could shed some light on this situation?" Sirius addressed the boy. "For instance, which one are you, and how did you get here? Lily doesn't seem to be capable of explaining the details."
"Oh right," The boy conceded, deflating a little. He opened his mouth the begin speaking but was stopped by some insistent tugging on his sleeve.
"Teddy, I'm hungry," the small redhead whined audibly. This seemed to shake the elder Lily Potter from whatever funk she was in because she immediately perked up.
"Of course dear, of course, I'll whip up some sandwiches in no time. Come along, the kitchen's through this way." While Lily Luna munched on peanut butter and jelly and the rest of the group nibbled on whatever they had chosen from the sandwich tray Teddy told the full story, or as much of it as he knew.
"So while I was telling off James and Albus, Roxy and Molly somehow slipped through the hedge but Vic helped me round them up and next thing I knew Freddy and Jacob were screaming that Lily fell into a potion they had made and turned into smoke. I didn't believe them at first, we learned a long time ago to take the twins' wild stories with a grain of salt but we were looking all over for you, I even interrupted the grown-up party to say we couldn't find you. So while everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off Jake pulled me up to the attic and showed me the potion you had fallen into. Hermione started studying it right away, but well Freddy and Jake are only eight so it wasn't like they were following a recipe or anything, there was all kinds of weird things in it like a broken wand core, some watches and dust from the Battle of Hogwarts and stuff. We weren't supposed to touch any of it, but Lily had been gone almost a whole day by then and Aurors were involved and the Department of Mysteries was all over the potion." Teddy alternately addressed Lily and the members of the Order paying no never mind to grammar or table manners.
"There was still some left, the Department of Mysteries only needed a sample and they could recreate the potion from that and I guess Freddy and Jake hid the rest because I accidentally got some on me. Not a lot but just enough to get Al crying thinking I would disappear, too. But nothing happened until I started to wash the stuff off. I guess it needs to be activated by water or something. I just hope they can make an antidote so someone can come and bring us back."
There was an awed silence after Teddy told his story. Trying his best to ignore the looks he was being given, Teddy dug into his remaining sandwiches with gusto, green hair the only thing indicating he was uncomfortable, and of course only Lily knew to pick up on that particular detail.
"So what do we do until then?" James asked. No one had any answers.
