A/N: I'm sorry for the delay; I'd like to update this once a week, but this has been crunch time at my university -- I'm sure you all understand. What I'm really sorry about is the timing, because this was always intended to be a reflective "filler" sort of chapter, which is not a proper reward for the wait I have put you all through! Ah well, next chapter James has promised to make things lively.

Thanks very much to Possum132, sums96, ink tree, ngayonatkailanman, and auroraziazan for their reviews.

Chapter 3 -- Floo Travel

"If you Apparate to Calais then you can catch the Floo to Saint-Etienne at 7:25, Captain," said Trainee Auror Magda Jacobs. "Special private trip. We have the whole itinerary lined up; you'll be in Kavala at five to eight."

"That's the fastest they could do?"

Trainee Auror Jacobs hesitated. "Well, Captain, we can make it 7:41, but only if we break Floo safety laws, and really, what use are you going to be for the boy if you're puking up all the meals you had today on arrival?"

Harry grimaced. "We'll risk it. Pull out all the stops."

"As you say, Captain."

"Thanks, Magda."

Harry Disapparated again, with nothing but his wand and his passport. Bracing himself all the while, because, to be honest, his stomach wasn't what it had been as a teenager, damn middle age anyway.

--

The Wizarding Tourist Office at Calais. Otherwise known as a bureaucratic madhouse. It parted like the sea before Harry, though. There were definite advantages to being the most famous wizard alive.

"Right this way, sir -- "

Whoosh. And then the Wizarding Tourist Office at Saint-Etienne.

From there, however, the trip seemed to slow to a Flobberworm's pace.

--

Harry sat, kicking his heels, letting all the French wash over him. Harry had never been much for languages and never would be. He sighed impatiently as the second hand of the clock on the wall insisted on moving only in seconds, and closed his eyes.

This sort of rampant inconvenience was exactly the sort of thing James liked to cause.

--

Harry continued to reflect upon his firstborn even as his passport was stamped and his person pushed into one roaring green fire after another.

When James's current path of self-destructive intensity had started, Hermione had laughed at Harry's perplexities, and reminded him that he had not exactly gone through adolescence with a great deal of grace either. Ditto with Ginny.

But that had been almost two years ago, and Hermione, along with everyone else, had long ceased to laugh.

Only Teddy's patience wasn't quite yet at an end when it came to his "godbrother." This had probably had a lot to do with Teddy having neither the Potter nor the Weasley temper, and even more to do with Teddy not actually having to live with the brat. James simply ran to hide out in Teddy's flat to escape the storms at home he himself had caused, and Teddy fed him and intervened so that his mother didn't actually murder him.

But while Teddy had gone a solid month chaperoning James on holiday without taking up Ginny's explicit permission to use a Full Body-Bind on him if necessary, the tone of his letters had grown steadily wearier...

From Saint-Etienne to Milano. (We've got to the Delacours' safe and sound, though it wasn't for lack of James trying!)

From Milano to Trieste, and yes, Harry's stomach was getting very choppy by now. (At the risk of ruining the suspense, I should probably jump to the end of the thrilling tale and assure you that a) James is completely fine, he was only in the hospital for a few hours and b) local Magical Law Enforcement says it won't be going on his record...)

From Trieste to Zagreb, and yes, Harry's stomach was getting very choppy by now. (Honestly, I should have known better than to let James get near anything known as "griffin wrestling"...)

From Zagreb to Travnik. (On the bright side, James has become the first human to beat goblins at poker in something like several centuries, which I'm sure will be a great comfort to him now we've revoked his allowed-to-leave-our-sight privileges for the rest of the week...)

From Travnik to Sarajevo. ("Seriously!" Harry shouted at this juncture. "Can we please move things along here?" Unfortunately, none of the helpful officials there seemed to understand Pissed-Off English.)

From Sarajevo to Pristina. (Victoire's clients weren't amused. Neither was Victoire, which is rather more unfortunate for me.)

From Pristina to Thessaloniki. (I'm beginning to think you might be right, Harry, as usual: I really should have taken James on holiday BEFORE he was allowed to use magic...)

From Thessaloniki to Kavala, thank God. It was time, Harry thought as he whirled through the oppressive green inferno, that he handled this himself.

"Welcome to Kavala, Auror Potter!" said a perky young woman, in clipped but flawless English and a blinding smile.

Said blinding smile was probably not why Harry stumbled out of the Floo, swayed violently in one direction, and then more violently in the other. At the second sway, he went down.

The nausea and the knot of concerned officials rushing towards him made him retreat to his thoughts again until the unpleasantness passed.

It just seemed he was always hearing about James's latest freak from someone else, whether it was an owl from Neville, or complaints from James's siblings and cousins, or half-finished shouting matches between him and Ginny when he walked through the door, or Floocalls from the Burrow whenever James was recreating the chaos that it had once taken seven energetic children to generate.

This time, he wasn't going to shop James off to Hogwarts for the beleaguered faculty to deal with, and James wasn't going to be able to give them all the slip by claiming sanctuary with Teddy. Harry was going to break through months of mounting exasperation to really deal with the boy.

It wasn't that James was a bad kid. Really.

(... at which point I tried to get James to acknowledge the culpable stupidity of trying to magically juggle fireballs, at least in the hotel. All I got was "It's not like it's a big deal, you can just morph the burn away, can't you?")

Okay. James was a bad kid, in fact he was a horrible kid. But still. He was Harry's horrible kid, and Harry was going to cut a swath through all these years of disconnection and madness.

At this juncture, full of new resolution, Harry tried to sit up.

Fortunately, one of his host officials had already Conjured a basin.

Harry swore at himself. He couldn't even handle the International Floo Connection. And really, there wasn't a force on earth that could stop James from using his boundless dark energy to make higher planes of existence just as much a bother as the humdrum ones. This was going to be mental and unpleasant and generally epic.

As he gingerly got to his feet he tried to console himself with the thought he could be wrong, but no dice. He was Harry bloody Potter. He was the modern-day Dumbledore. This meant, unfortunately, that he was never, ever wrong.