"So James, why are we doing this again? I mean the kid's like a total stranger, and it's not like you or Lily to bring in random strays, especially strays who already have somewhere to stay, no matter how amusing doing so might be." Sirius asked as he pulled pulled the portrait of his uncle Alphard off the wall in order to carry it into his room as he and the rest scurried to hide anything that was about the house that could be considered magical.

"Do you remember when we went to visit Lily during the Christmas break of our final year?" James asked, deciding to go with the most logical reason for the completely illogical snap decision that he and Lily had made since "It just seemed like the thing to do at the time" probably wouldn't quite cut it with the man whose home the kid was technically invading even if Sirius had said the house belonged to all of the Marauders and their families should they have them.

"Yes." Sirius replied frowning slightly, wondering what Christmas Dinner at the Evanses had to do with why James and Lily had decided to take in a random muggle boy who already had some place to stay without consulting him or the others, even if tricking the kid into thinking that they were ordinary run of the mill muggles sounded like it could be fun.

"Remember those family heirlooms that originally belonged to an ancestor of her mother who'd been a missionary that she showed us?" James asked, clearly trying to get at something without officially acknowledging it by saying it aloud in case somebody who was listening might find some reason to object to what he wasn't saying.

"Yes." he said, slowly drawing the word out to two syllables, wondering what a couple of still photos and bunch of dusty old muggle junk from India had to do with what James was getting at.

"Let's just say that if all else fails we can claim that Lily is related to that Patil berk." James replied.

Sirius probably would have made a comment about Lily's apparent ethnicity, but he'd remembered the stories about one or two pureblood families that had started off with permanent tans that had faded over the generations. Aside from the legend that Slytherin's ability to speak with snakes had come from an Egyptian ancestor who'd marched into Britain with the Romans, it was said that a sizable portion of the students and faculty of Hogwarts had had more of a er, Mediterranean cast to them back during the school's early days. Unfortunately, about the only things left of that period that had started a century or two after the school had been founded and ended a century or two after that was the odd crumbling tome that was written in either Hebrew or Arabic that one might accidentally find mouldering in one of the more isolated corners of the school library. Unlike in the muggle world where it was somewhat surprising that Lily's mixed ancestor had found an English spouse back during the Nineteenth century, purity of blood wasn't entirely tied to region of origin, though native born English tended to get more preferential treatment in Britain much the way native born French were better treated in France and so on and so forth.

"Nearly a billion people in India, and the first random Indian kid she runs into turns out to be a relative." Sirius muttered in awe of Lily's insane luck, the same insane luck that had led the woman to find a one-of-a-kind tome on sacrificial magic at a muggle estate sale last week, as he hung Alphard's picture on the far wall in his bedroom directly across from a cutout from a nudie magazine that gave the old man a coy smile as it moved into a rather seductive pose.

Normally, he wouldn't keep any portrait or other such painting with people in it in his room, but seeing as he likely wouldn't be having company anytime soon since there'd be a kid in the house, it was reasonably safe to do so. So long as his dear old uncle didn't start giving him marital advice that was. Out of the Marauders, he was the only one who wasn't currently either married or dating. James was married, Remus was trying to get an annulment thanks to that incident in Vegas, and Peter was dating this shy little thing from the Longbottom side of the aisle that he'd met at his sister Alice's wedding.

Remus hummed to himself as he picked up the charmed lawn ornaments and started hauling them into the shed which he would be putting anti-muggle warding around when he was done. Having the Marauders together all under one roof was a bit trying at times, but there was often plenty going on to keep him distracted from THAT. Aside from their constant search for a cure, his parents had tried to treat him normally afterward, especially after Dumbledore had enrolled him into Hogwarts in order to see if having a Werewolf around could work out, but there was always a certain something in their eyes every time they looked at him.

Aside from Sirius who'd run away from home, all of their parents had needed a break, and they had needed a break from their parents. A break during which they could do crazy things like go to Las Vegas with fake IDs or bring muggles home without having their parents standing over them giving them that look, or that other look he'd received from his parents who'd spent everything trying to find a cure for him when he'd announced that he'd won the equivalent of a thousand galleons, and then spent it all in an evening and woke up the next morning with a hangover and a wife.

He didn't entirely know why James and Lily had decided to bring a muggle home, nor did he care. As far as he was concerned, it was yet another distraction from the fact that James had been bankrolling him because he'd been unable to find work and his parents couldn't support him because they'd spent everything on him already, and the fact that the courts were stalling on his annulment despite the fact that both he and the soon to be ex-Mrs. both wanted it.

As far as distractions went, it looked like it would be a thumping good one at that.

As Peter cleared the charmed knick-knacks out of the living-room, he tried to figure out how he was going to play this seeing as he was the least familiar with Muggle culture amongst the group. That was par for the course though. He was the weakest of the Marauders and, in comparison to the other three, he appeared positively stupid.

He wasn't stupid though, not by a long shot. While he wasn't Master material at any subject, he was competent enough in several fields. He was reasonably good at every subject he'd taken at school and a couple he hadn't, but his best two were Potions and Transfiguration. He was just barely good enough in Transfiguration to have mastered the Animagus spell despite it being beyond N.E.W.T, and if you set a potion recipe before him, he could brew it well enough that it would turn out right no matter how complicated it was.

This situation was outside his experience however and, because of certain divided loyalties, exceedingly precarious to boot. If he tried to avoid the boy that two of his friends were bringing home with little to no advanced warning, his friends might start asking questions, and asking questions could lead to the discovery of a certain tattoo.

So far, the Dark Lord hadn't given him any major tasks or put him on any of the more important raids since he'd played up his inadequacies, fully taking advantage of the reputation for being useless that he'd somehow acquired back at Hogwarts, and after that last bit of deliberate bumbling, he likely wouldn't be invited on any more muggle hunts either. But, his friends wouldn't see that. All they would see was that he'd become a Death Eater, and that they'd been betrayed...

Khan suppressed a sigh as he watched the countryside pass by. Mrs. Potter had tried to engage him in conversation several times since they's left Dr. Parker's flat, and he'd rebuffed all attempts at conversation. It wasn't that Mrs. Potter was a particularly bad conversationalist for an ordinary human, nor did she speak down to him as many adults were wont to do with children no matter how intelligent or advanced they were, he just wasn't in the mood to speak.

Part of the reason he wasn't in the mood to speak was that he wanted to get his thoughts and feelings in order, especially that strange sense of abandonment he found himself feeling despite the fact that he'd pretty much despised Dr. Parker. The puzzle that was Lily Potter was another one of those things that he wanted to sort out, and quiet observation could probably net him more answers about her than whatever the woman could say. Discovering that they were related, however distantly, was something of a surprise. He'd been aware of his lineage for a good long time, and the story of that relative of one of his mother's ancestors who'd gone and shamed the family by marrying an English missionary had been one of hundreds. Finding someone from the flip side of that story - someone whose family had been shamed because one of their ancestors who'd been the respected son of a minister had "gone native" - had been interesting.

Of course, considering how distantly the two of them were related, they were less family and more a minor footnote on each-other's family trees if they were even acknowledged at all...

The question was, did he even want to acknowledge the Potters as something more than a historical side note that was only tangentially related to him or not?

Author's note to Nanashi and others who raised the point:

When it comes to the tech question, the answer does seem slightly complicated. About the only thing that was known to exist in Khan's 20th century that didn't exist in ours aside from Khan and his ilk themselves is the sleeper ships that were invented in the 90s. But, one would think that the technologies that were necessary to create them would result in a number of spinoff technologies that don't exist in our universe. Aside from the medical option of putting someone in stasis until a cure for whatever ailment they have can be found ala that ST:TNG episode, I can't think of any.

As for my making Alice Longbottom Wormtail's sister: 1. Alice Longbottom's maiden name is never given. 2. It is noted in the books that Pettigrew bore a marked resemblance to Neville in his youth. 3. Neville seemed to have inherited his bone structure and much of his looks from his mother if the books were to be believed.

Edited 1/2/16.