Khan had known from day one that Dr. Parker didn't like him. Never had, never would. It wasn't just the man's anti-social and highly abrasive nature that accounted for this. The man regarded him as a failure because he couldn't be controlled. But, who would want to be controlled by a man whose intelligence they would soon outstrip if they didn't already?
Things had been easier back in India. Much nicer, and a great deal warmer too. But, someone had killed his parents in a manner he had yet to discern as there hadn't been a single mark on their bodies, and he'd been forced to move to Chilly Old England which he absolutely despised as a result.
Most of the reason he disliked England was the company. For the most part, the only people he had to interact with were Parker and his clients since all of the other Augments had been scattered across Europe. Of those clients he saw streaming through the clinic day in and day out, Mr. and Mrs. Potter with whom he'd be staying despite the fact that they'd apparently only met Dr. Parker that day were the most interesting, and it was not because they were a good decade or more younger than the people who usually frequented the clinic that was their last hope for bearing inferior offspring. There was just something about the both of them that seemed...off.
As he went to catch the bus back to Dr. Parker's well appointed flat so he could grab his stuff as he'd been ordered to, he noticed the Potters having a hushed conversation in front of their car before splitting up, the wife grabbing the keys to the vehicle out of her handbag and opening the driver's side door, and the husband walking off. As he stood at the bus stop, Mrs. Potter got into the antique car that was in near pristine condition which belonged to the Potter couple who were becoming more and more of an anomaly the longer he watched them, started it up, and pulled up next to him.
"Hop in." she said as she opened the passenger side door.
"Why should I?" he asked mostly out of pique as he tried to find a logical reason for why not to do so aside from his ingrained habit of not accepting rides from strangers.
"Because it'll save you the cost of bus fare." replied the rather young Mrs. Potter whom he'd learned from the conversation he'd had with her earlier was nineteen just like her husband.
Sighing, he climbed into the vehicle that looked more like it belonged in a museum than it did on the road. The trip back to Parker's flat was mostly silent due to the awkwardness of the situation. He'd said just about everything he had to say to Mrs. Potter back in the waiting room as they waited for her husband's examination to be finished. Now however, he was going to be forced to further interact with the woman who was reasonably intelligent if oddly educated for a bog standard human being because Dr. Parker had broken any number of social conventions and given him to her and her husband to care for until it was time for him to go to Oxford, which he was not particularly looking forward to attending due to the age gap between him and the normal students. An age gap which was sure to cause any amount of friction due to his classmates' inevitable attempts to "Put him in his place.".
Fortunately, there was going to be a puzzle for him to solve where he was going, and that puzzle was the Potters themselves. Unfortunately, solving that puzzle wouldn't take more than a day or two by his estimate.
James knew that what he and Lily did was impulsive as hell but, after meeting Dr. Parker face to face, Lily couldn't leave that poor boy with that dreadful man for another minute even with the war on and he agreed with her. The environment that kid was stuck in was completely detrimental to that boy's mental wellbeing. If worse came to worse however, they could send the boy to Cokeworth to be doted upon by Lily's mother who'd been rather lonely since the house had emptied out following Lily's and Petunia's marriages and Mr. Evans's death from Cancer last January. Mr. Evans could have survived, but he'd refused the magical treatment that had been offered to him since he found the standard method of curing the disease to be "Barbaric". Of course, transferring terminal illnesses to convicted criminals who'd received The Kiss would seem barbaric to someone who was raised in the muggle world but, since the lights were out and nobody was home, it was more of an act of mercy than anything considering the fact that they could go on for decades after that point since killing the bodies after The Kiss was received was illegal due to some sort of moralistic bullshit.
Thanks to his opening his big mouth and Lily deciding that anywhere was better than that dull office where there was nothing for that exceedingly bright child to do all day but read and plot mischief in order to relieve the unendurable boredom he was surely suffering through, they were going to have to figure out how to bring the boy home with them without breaking the statute of secrecy. The fact that he, Lily, Moony, and Wormtail were currently living with Padfoot in the cottage in Godric's Hollow that the white sheep of the Black family had bought with the money his uncle Alphie had left him since all of them had decided to give their parents some breathing space was going to make things a bit difficult, especially since he and Lily hadn't consulted their housemates beforehand.
Perhaps if he phrased things so that living as muggles until the boy left for the Michaelmas term which began in October was a grand joke of some sort...
Being as bright and clever as the Marauders were, it was potentially possible to pull it off without needing to Obliviate the boy if they worked at it. All of them had some degree of familiarity with both muggle gadgets and muggle culture and none of them were dumb, as the dimmest Lumos in their group was merely slightly above average. The fact that Lily had arranged most of the cottage's furnishings when they'd moved in following the wedding that had come close on the heels of their graduation from Hogwarts since Black was absolute pants at interior design would also help as well, seeing as the woman had gone out and purchased several gadgets including a waffle iron and a television which seemed to be a requirement for every muggle home these days.
Most people tended to write him and the other Marauders off without even once realizing that if they'd taken a closer look they would have noticed that there were Potions, Charms, and Transfiguration prodigies that could potentially put the most touted amongst the student populations of several schools to shame in their midst. There was a reason why Hogwarts's most brilliant students had a tendency to become Pranksters or budding Dark Lords, and that reason was that without a means of advancing beyond their grade level because the seven years of schooling corresponded to a signed and sealed seven-year apprenticeship to the school the school geniuses tended to become bored with the pace of things, and boredom breeds destruction of all sorts.
The Khan kid who was reading a book Lily hadn't gotten into until she was nearly fourteen looked to be wavering on that line of destructive boredom already. Having a new place to explore before he was sent off to what he was told was an exceedingly prestigious muggle university at a very tender age would probably keep the child out of the sort of mischief that would bring him to the attention of the authorities.
Having a criminal record was detrimental for future employment. He should know, considering the fact that he'd spent a month in Azkaban during the Summer break after his fifth year after his parents had refused to pay the judge off the way Black's parents had after he and his friend had pulled a rather vicious prank on someone they'd randomly run into in Diagon Alley and taken an immediate dislike to at the start of the Summer, foolishly believing that they would get off scot free the way they so often had done at Hogwarts, the way they had done after they had rather stupidly led Snape to a transformed Remus. They had not gotten off scot free however, and for the first time in his life he had been made to pay for his actions in the real world rather than in a school environment where the worst he could suffer was an unpleasant detention preparing Potions ingredients.
That short prison stay had killed off any and all dreams of being an Auror, and the job offers didn't exactly come pouring in during his seventh year despite the fact that he'd been made Head Boy due to his popularity and the fact that he'd been willing to take the risk that year after the previous choice for Head Boy who'd been a Muggleborn had been killed rather messily and left for the public to find a week before the school year had started. He may have been good at Quidditch, but that wasn't what he wanted to do with his life. He probably would have played for one of the teams anyways to support his family if his parents hadn't provided him with enough money to fall back on though.
Fortunately, some good had come of his stint in Azkaban as he'd been forced to grow up a bit after having a month where there was nothing he could do aside from wallowing in despair in one of the prison's low security wings as he carefully re-examined his life. He hadn't fully stopped with the mischief, and he hadn't stopped pranking Snape, but he had put the brakes on things before he actually permanently injured or killed somebody as it was looking like he would have done had he not been forced to face the potential consequences of his actions. A side bonus of his somewhat more mature outlook on life and his marginally more mature actions had been that Lily had finally viewed him as a potential boyfriend and later husband. The relative security and increased employment prospects that came with marrying a pureblood had more to do with it than love when it came to why his ever-so-practical Lily had decided to marry him, but fortunately the love had come later.
As Lily went to get the car that they'd parked in the small lot that adjoined the clinic more for show than anything, he headed into a convenient alley, made sure that it was uninhabited, and Disapparated. One uncomfortable ride later, and he was standing outside Padfoot's cottage where the owner was racing around on the lawn chasing butterflies while Moony and Wormtail sat off to the side playing chess under the early Summer sun.
"Hey guys, guess what we're going to be doing until October..."
Edited 1/2/16.