A generation afterward:

He'd really meant to be methodical about it, honest. Searching through his family vault, examining everything in a systematic and painstaking manner that even Hermione would have approved of, a practical means of checking whatever was in the Gringotts secured room for valuables of the Potter family.

That vow had lasted just to the first photo album.

Sitting cross-legged on the vault floor next to the shelf he'd taken the book from, Harry Potter examined with absolute delight the volume of his family pictures. This was even better than the photo album Hagrid had given him after his first year at Hogwarts. That specific picture book had included only the moving photographs donated by Hogwarts friends of James and Lily Potter, which had necessarily concentrated on images of the pair at the wizarding school and later on in their lives, along with several formal portraits of them with baby Harry.

Now, what he was holding showed Harry what he'd never seen before of his parent's lives, along with other members of the Potter and Evans families. He'd looked with fascination for the first time at images of his paternal grandparents and other distant relatives, many of these stretching back generations. Flicking past the pages of the photo album, Harry had noted with amusement that in the wizarding photos, his father's hair as a boy had been just as messy as his son's would turn out to be.

Wonderingly, he'd stared at still Muggle images of a Lily Evans over her lifetime, from baby pictures where she'd already had a thin crop of reddish hair, to her growing up from a toddler, a girl, and finally to a young woman. More photos along, Harry had to blink at the appearance of a thin-faced girl in the Evans family, who didn't seem to be all that happy about sharing her family life with her big sister. It was clear that Petunia Evans had early on developed the sour look that her nephew was all too familiar with.

Well, at least there weren't any pictures of the Dursleys. Harry let a wry smile pass over his face at how Vernon would have exploded at even the thought of sending family pictures to his detested relatives. At this thought, Harry absently rubbed his rear, numb from an unknown amount of time seated on the vault floor. Shifting his position, the wizard pulled out his wallet from his jeans back pocket and placed this at the bottom of the shelf from which he'd taken the photo album. Then, the man went back to intently examining the images of his family.

About a dozen feet away, if it had been in any way sentient, a twenty-year-old charm could only have been described as quivering in pure frustration. The completion of the sole purpose of its existence was just out of range, sitting innocently without knowing he was near a seriously-damaged prank, that if it was indeed possible to attribute human characteristics to nonhuman objects, this said item would have been best depicted as wearing its underwear on its head and muttering to itself, "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!"

Being in the ham-fisted grasp of Vernon Dursley can do that to just about anything.

Inside an ornately wrapped gift box, a small wizarding toy in various broken pieces remained ready to accomplish its fractured purpose. The dictionary definition in which that adjective was stated as 'to be damaged, disrupted, or destroyed' certainly applied, especially the word 'disrupted.'

The portkey charm hadn't worked twenty years before because the damage done to it by a clumsy Muggle had caused it to refuse to function unless a single person sharing the same biological make-up of its two original targets had come along. Since that specific person just hadn't been conceived until several weeks later after the wedding reception, it was no wonder why the charm had completely ignored James and Lily Potter. It would work very well on their son, though.

Something not foreseen by a member of the Black family would also work quite well, if not exactly within the limits originally set forth by Sirius. As it had done countless times before, the charm in the Potter vault again scanned its surroundings and once more prepared to send its target via portkey to whatever place best matched the environs of its present location. Though, the damaged charm was perfectly willing to send its hapless victim to somewhere a bit more broadly interpreted than a mischievous wizard would ever have considered.

Sirius Black really shouldn't have put on the charm the instructions of transporting James and Lily Potter to 'any' wedding reception when they'd been in the middle of celebrating their own nuptials. Two decades later, the disrupted charm had now somehow construed 'any' to mean sending its target to 'anywhere' matching its current environment. As in, anywhere in the entire Multiverse.

Finally, regarding the task a giggling Marauder had commanded his best friends to accomplish before they could return and then start looking with murder in their hearts for Sirius, the now-wonky charm had its own mandate on exactly what Harry Potter had to accomplish before it would deign to allow the young wizard to return to his vault.

It should turn out to be a most interesting experience for Harry, if only he'd get off his bum and come juuuuuust a bit closer….