The following days whirled past him in a blur of eating, sleeping, exercises and learning. He stuck to the regime the mediwixen taught him in hospital and was slowly building up his strength again. In fact, after a good few weeks of the program Harry felt better than he had before the whole time travel nonsense began.
Ever since he landed in 1975, Harry had tried emulating his friends a bit more. Since he couldn't reach them when he is, he'd embody the traits that he most missed about them. He'd decided to follow Hermione's thirst for knowledge a bit more, though still not coming close to the actual witch's level. He'd also decided to bring out Ron's caring, Neville's kindness, and Ginny's wit. His favorite characteristic that he was trying to bring out was Luna's holding on to her uniqueness in the face of adversity. He was going to be true to himself and no longer follow along based on snippets of what his parents were like or how his relatives demanded he act.
Another thing he still hadn't managed to wrap his head around was the fact that both of his parents -even his grandparents- were still alive. He wasn't sure how to handle this being the case, but he knew that meeting them was something he was looking forward to and terrified of in equal parts. And those feelings rose again when he thought about re-meeting people he'd known in the future. Seeing his godfather and favourite professor, seeing the teacher that had given him more detentions than all the others combined, not to mention them being sort of younger than him in this time. After all, he was about to turn 16 and they were only 15, or would be before the coming school year. He didn't even know when any of their birthdays were for that matter.
Shaking his head, he pulled himself out of the spiral that he'd been repeatedly caught in over the past weeks. Pretty much since he left the hospital and started spending so little time around others. He sometimes saw a professor or two in the kitchens when he went down for his meals, but otherwise he'd been pretty much left alone. Though he had been alerted to Dumbledore's request for a meeting with him not too long ago. In fact, if he had been alerted any later he may not have had a chance to grab dinner before he needed to head up to the Headmaster's office.
After a quick meal with the house elves and a brisk walk up the moving stairwells, Harry found himself outside of the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster's office. "Parma violets" opened the spinning stairwell. As he went to knock on the door, he could hear talking from inside. Unlike in his fourth year where he overheard the yelling the words themselves weren't decipherable. He could just hear the drone of voices and tones behind them. They sounded friendly and excited from what Harry could hear, but he still felt it best to announce his presence so he wouldn't be caught eavesdropping like he'd been before. A moment to gather himself and he knocked on the door, ending the conversation inside.
"Come in, Harry." Professor Dumbledore called out to him. When Harry entered he got a good look at the other two in the room. It was a couple, both seeming closer to Dumbledore's age than any of the professors he'd met over the weeks he'd spent in Hogwarts.
"Hello," the man greeted, the woman next to him smiled gently at Harry. They both looked like Mrs. Weasley in the sense that they would have headed over and hugged the life out of him if he hadn't seemed so skittish. It wasn't that he thought they were evil Death Eaters or something, he just wasn't sure what exactly was happening and why they were here for his meeting with Dumbledore in the first place. He managed a mumbled hello back and looked to the headmaster with confusion.
"Harry, my boy, please sit down. This is Charlus and Dorea Potter, they're your grandparents." The couple was watching his reaction to those words, the shock and slight awe that flew across his face before more confusion set in.
"I'm sorry sir but, back in hospital you mentioned a Fleamont? I'd assumed that he was my grandfather from that."
"Oh I see, Harry -can I call you Harry?- Fleamont is my older brother. He's the one who is Lord Potter, which would be why your headmaster brought him up instead of me. Since Monty never has had children and doesn't seem to be headed that way either, he's named my son-your father-James as his heir."
Harry knew that everyone was speaking english. The words were clear to him, but any meaning wasn't forthcoming. The thought of so much family, more than he'd ever thought of before, was simply overwhelming. As he came back into it, he could hear his grandparents talking about him.
"Blimey, he does look like our Jamie, doesn't he, Dorea?"
"Charlus, darling, you're scaring the poor boy."
Harry managed to shoot his grandparents a small smile, he'd heard before that he looked like his father, he'd seen the pictures that proved it. But hearing his grandparents, the ones who were currently raising his father, say that he looked like him brought a warmth to his chest and made him feel more at home in this time than he had yet. "It's nice to meet you," he said shyly.
It was all a bit stop and go, and he frequently found himself studying the people before him. He searched their faces for resemblance to what he saw in the mirror, watched their gestures and wondered whether that was the same way he held a cup or lit up with excitement. They spoke of inconsequential matters, stories of mischief from roaming Hogwarts' hallowed halls, tidbits of his father's childhood he'd never even truly thought to imagine before. He found himself a bit worried that James' brand of trouble may be closer to bullying than he'd ever found himself or would ever want to find himself at that.
But, as the day drew to a close and Dumbledore promised that his grandparents would be allowed to come visit him again before school started up, Harry pushed aside those worries and realized that hearing second hand tales is all well and good, but he'd have to reserve judgement for after he actually met his father and his band of merry Marauders. Before they said their goodbyes Charlus did turn to Harry with a familiar spark in his eyes.
"I think it'll be best that we wait to tell James about you."
Dorea chimed in instantly with playfully narrowed eyes. "You just want to see him get a big shock, payback for all those pranks they've been cooking up this summer."
"I can neither confirm nor deny, my dear."
After Harry's grandparents had stepped through the floo, heading home just in time for their house elf to call them to supper, Dumbledore turned to Harry.
"I hope, my boy, that you understand why I didn't angle for you to join them for the last bit of the summer hols?"
"I figured it had to do with keeping an eye on me here, sir. Or that you knew they wouldn't feel comfortable taking a stranger in, grandson or not."
Dumbledore's face crumpled a bit then, he seemed to gain a pained weight about him. "No, Harry. I see no need to watch you as though you've done anything wrong. And I'm quite certain that if I hadn't already spoken to Charlus and Dorea about it, you'd be at Potter Manor now. Rather, I thought it may be best to ease you in a bit more. It's one thing to get along with someone for an afternoon, but quite another matter to live with them before you even know them, family or not. After my spectacular failure in your youth, I'd hoped to give you a good foundation here, at Hogwarts. Somewhere you hopefully already feel comfortable and relatively safe. Reaching out from a position where you know that Hogwarts, your teachers, the house elves, and I would all support you even if you happen to not get along very well with your family."
"Oh, I- Well I don't know quite what to say to that, sir." Harry was a bright, cherry red now. He felt quite warm at the show of support and a fair bit embarrassed that it was warranted, as shown by his answer to Dumbledore's original question.
"Quite alright, my boy. Let's just call it a night now that I know that you know that there are people who are behind you."
With that said, they bid each other goodnight. Harry headed down to his rooms and Dumbledore left behind to the comforts of Fawkes.
There were many more days that followed where Harry got to see his family. Charlus and Dorea seemed to be able to pop around to Hogwarts with little trouble, thank goodness for magical transportation. Harry found out many things he'd never known about his family. Apparently Fleamont, Lord Potter, was an avid potioneer who had invented Sleakeazy's, a very popular hair potion that was said to tame even the wildest of locks. Though, it still didn't help much with the infamous Potter hair. Harry did seem to remember Hermione using a whole bottle to wrestle her hair into the intricate mass of braids and locks that she wore to the Yule Ball.
Outside of that, Harry also learned that his grandparents had both retired not too long ago, though they'd never really needed to work in the first place. Potter Manor was in truth more of a palace based on the size, and it was tradition for new families to be given a wing on their wedding day, keeping the whole of the Potter family in one large, sprawling home. This, paired with the large vaults in the Potter name -there had been many entrepreneurs in their family- meant that they were given a certain freedom to pursue their passions and an ability to help others.
Dorea had retired from her job as a hit-witch, she'd put in over 40 years on the force and made sure that there were many protocols in place to protect the public from both criminals and those labeled as protectors. She could admit that some joined the DMLE just for the power trips that came with their positions.
After her retirement, she pursued a different passion, the textile arts. She was a dab hand at alterations and improvements, but runic embroidery was what made her light up. She'd already made many garments and accessories for her family that had specific purposes in mind, cloaks that were embroidered to look sharp and keep the wearer warm. She'd even patented some of the runic arrays that she invented, like the one she put into James' clothes, to help with that typical teen-boy smell and the dirt that came with it.
Charlus, on the other hand, had seemingly tried everything once. He started out with Dorea in the DMLE, though he'd bounced around a fair bit there. Then he quit and decided that working with his hands was more up his alley, he spent a good 10 years in construction and other labor intensive jobs, though magic did help with aspects of it. Unfortunately, he suffered a work-related accident that made him leave that career behind. Charlus swore that if it hadn't been his back and potentially life-threatening, that he would have kept up with his work anyway and hang the consequences.
After a bit of a break where he spent time trying to find his new passion, Charlus fell into linguistics. It started small with him just admiring some of the books in other languages that were kept in Potter Manor's library and eventually snowballed to where he was teaching evening classes in a variety of human and creature languages. His personal favourites were Gobbledygook and Arabic, though he'd had a hard time learning both.
Since his "retirement", which Harry learned was truly just a culling of the classes he taught and jobs he took in translations, he only spent a few hours a week at the university. Though, he did manage to bring home an astounding number of jobs in translations since he could do them from anywhere and wearing anything, including his bath-robe and slippers if he so pleased- which he did.
Throughout this period of getting to know Charlus and Dorea, Harry learned a lot about himself, too. He realized that being an auror wasn't exactly something he looked forward to, and that there were far more fields and careers and paths of study that he'd never registered before. Sure he knew that Bill and Charlie Weasley had cool jobs and broke curses and looked after dragons respectively. But he had no idea what that even really meant. No clue what kinds of subjects went into preparing for those careers or any others. It strengthened his resolve to learn more and figure out what he was passionate about.
It definitely helped, hearing Charlus' story and how the man tried out so many different things. Harry'd found himself crying with laughter at some of the odd-job stories his grandfather shared with him. Like the time he worked in a shop and somehow the manager who'd been harassing his coworker found himself hexed neon yellow with a flashing sign above his head screaming 'Pervert'.
Apparently James came by the pranking honestly at least, and Harry was quite sure that the Weasley twins would have gotten along great with both of his grandparents. For that matter, he was sure all of his friends would have loved them, just like he was learning to.