Are You Coming?

Chapter 6

There was another knock on the door. Followed by another. And one more. James counted them. One. Two. Three.

He groaned, still loud, head still sore. He shoved his head under the pillow once again and refused to pay any attention to the noise that roared in her ear. Make it stop, he thought, Merlin, make it stop.

The door opened and a beam of light fell across the curtain darkened room but James didn't notice it. He rolled onto his back, muttering about the bad morning he appeared to be having and cursing his son for waking him and his friends for getting him drunk in the first place.

"Damn, Sirius Black," he growled.

"Now, Prongs, that's not nice," an all too familiar voice said. The voice he least wanted to hear at this moment. He'd rather have two Harrys with him, yelling and jumping around than to see Sirius at the moment.

"Go to hell, Black," he called out.

"Prongs-" Sirius whined.

"Shhhh, Padfoot!" James exclaimed, burying himself under the duvet.

"Good morning to you too, Prongs. Now, who's that little kid we saw downstairs? Dark black hair, thin nose, glasses…" Sirius asked.

"Piercing green eyes," Remus continued, suggesting he knew exactly who Harry was.

"Padfoot, Moony, I'm really tired, my head hurts and I feel like crap, can you please leave me alone and let me get some sleep so I might be able to complete some work later?" James asked.

"Prongs, come on, the suspense is killing me! I want to know who he is!" Sirius tried again.

"Well, we can't always have what we want, Sirius, can we?" James said, his voice cold.

"Why can't we discuss it now?" Sirius tried again.

"Because I have a hangover!" James exclaimed, sitting up suddenly in the bed. "Shit!" he exclaimed as he felt the pain in his head once again.

"You're either using this as a really bad excuse or you are obviously out of practice for dealing with hangovers!" Sirius said. "I mean the amount you drank last night would have been nothing to you once!"

"Yeah? Well I have a lot more important things to do than drinking now-a-days," James retorted, his eyes flashing at his closest friends.

Sirius looked appalled at the idea that there were possibly more important things in life that drinking. He was about to respond to James' comment when Remus cut him off.

"Prongs, you can't use that as an excuse, you've always kept a good strong hangover potion in the top shelf in the bathroom, I know from years of bringing you two home drunk… I'll get you some and you'll be your true self in no time. Then you can tell us who the little boy is," Remus smiled, thoroughly anticipating the story.

It took a few minutes for James to drink the potion, enjoy a good breakfast, shower and dress before he was ready to talk to Remus and Sirius. They waited patiently in his meeting room, well Remus patiently, Sirius was not so patient. By the time James returned, the dark haired man had thought of all sorts of different senarios by which the young boy had come to live in James' house. Was he James' adopted child, brought to take over the company? His dead cousin's child? (Not that Sirius was aware that James' cousin had died or that she had a child.) Had the child run away from the circus and found James? Was James employing children to work in his house now?

Remus allowed Sirius to talk through his ideas, while he sat there in the knowledge of exactly who the boy was but eager to know the circumstances that he had come to the Potter house by.

James came in and sat at the head of the table. His hazel eyes were weary as he clutched a mug of coffee.

"Spill," Sirius instructed.

James gave a long sigh before talking. "At that party my mum had the other night, I went into my storage room to escape from all those annoying girls my mother had invited and I saw a figure standing in the room. As I went in to tell her to get out, she turned around. It was Lily…"

Both boys gasped, after the years James had once spent looking for the once girl of his dreams, to suddenly find her, was absolutely shocking. They were both silent and allowed James to carry on.

"Then two days ago I was sitting in my office, working-"

"As always," Sirius muttered under his breath.

James gave him a dirty look before continuing. "When Eve knocked on my door, she said there's someone at the door that wanted to see me. So I asked her who it was and she said it was some girl. I told her I was too busy to see a simple girl and told her to go away. The girl persisted arguing in with Eve and eventually forced her way into my office. I was shocked to see that girl was Lily Evans-"

Sirius gave a dramatic gasp, just where James needed it.

"She brought this small boy in with her and said that she was going away with her boyfriend and I needed to look after the boy because… because… I'm his father," he said the last word in a whisper, as if ashamed.

"You have a kid?" Sirius asked, "I'm an uncle! Is Lily the mum?"

"Yeah, she is," James nodded.

"That's so sweet!" he replied. "But when? How?"

"Well, Lily and I slept together on the last day of sixth year, just before she disappeared," James continued his explanation. "And apparently her parents took her away without any notice; her dad's job suddenly got moved to France. Her parents weren't so fond of me, just as my parents weren't fond of her. A few weeks later she must've discovered her pregnancy and when she told her parents they forbid her from contacting me or she would've had to have an abortion."

"Oh, that's sweet, she gave up her true love to keep your child," Sirius commented.

"And what help is that to me?" James asked, his tone scathing.

"You have a son!" Sirius exclaimed, the excitement evident in his voice.

"I've been landed with this great lump of a child, he's stupid, he's naughty, he's a complete utter nuisance," James tried to explain his feelings for Harry.

"James, he's beautiful," Remus finally said.

"But I have no time for such things," James leant back in the chair, thinking of all the work he'd planned to get done before returning to the office the next day.

"I don't suppose you do!" Sirius said coldly. "But I do! Leave him to me, Prongs, I'll keep him amused."

"Yes, please, get him out of my hair. Thank you, Sirius, just until I find a babysitter for him. I won't dump him on you for too long," Sirius gave a snort, implying that Harry could never be a problem to him. James stood, gave his friends a half-smile and walked out the room.

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The next day was the end of the weekend and Harry had to return to school. He'd had fun the previous evening, with Sirius and Remus. Sirius was easy to get along with; he was so child-like and seemingly carefree. Remus had seemed scary at first, particularly when Sirius confided in him that Remus was a werewolf. Remus, however, was so gentle and caring. Harry couldn't understand how James had such caring friends when he was so horrible.

Harry had been particularly upset that morning when the two men had dropped him off at school. He'd found that Sirius and Remus had to go away that night, working. Remus and Sirius were aurors which Harry thought was absolutely fascinating. He'd heard stories from his Mum about aurors. He wished he could go with them that evening.

It was therefore up to Harry's father to collect him from school.

It was a fairly tedious day, back to normal after the strange and reasonably terrifying weekend Harry had had. He told Hermione and Ron what had happened but pretended that everything was fine; he told them that his dad was rich and kind.

That afternoon, he waited in the playground at the end of school with the other children. Hermione and Ron said goodbye to him as each of their parents arrived. Ron's younger sister waved at him from her mother's arms. Ron had so many brothers and a little sister. Harry briefly wondered what it would be like to have a brother or sister.

Harry watched as the playground emptied until he was the only child left. The teachers all went back into their classrooms, not noticing the small boy sitting underneath the chestnut tree. It was starting to get cold and Harry shivered and pulled his coat more tightly around his small body. He began to imagine that his mum had picked him up and that she'd hugged him as he'd waved goodbye to his friends.

Finally, after what felt like hours he left the school and decided to walk home. It wasn't far from here and he'd walked often enough with his mother. He slowly walked through the park as it was getting dark. There was no lighting inside the park but he knew where he was. Just as he was about to enter the brightly lit street around the corner from his house, Harry heard a rustling.

He remembered Ron talking about wild animals hiding in bushes and went to investigate in case he saw something interesting. The rustling stopped and Harry turned back towards the road, disappointed. Just as he was about to leave the park, a dark figure jumped over the high hedge surrounding the park and rushed towards him.

So, Sirius and Remus know about Harry now... if you want the next chapter soon you really will have to review and give me the inspiration for the next chapter.
Thanks for all of you for still keeping with this, means a lot to me.

With love JLF xoxo