A/N: Happy Monday everyone! Here's a new chapter.

Chapter 15: A spoonful of hot chocolate

When James stepped back into the kitchen, Lily gave him a 'I'll tell you later' look and tilted her head towards a subdued Violet. James returned the look. They would definitely need a debrief…

Lily nodded and turned back towards the hob.

"Hot chocolate is ready!" she bellowed, making the boy jump.

James gave him a cautious smile as he steered Vi towards the table. She shot Harry a suspicious look but didn't say anything as she took her usual seat next to James.

With one last swirl of her wooden spoon, Lily brought over the fragrant pan.

James felt his mouth water in anticipation. Shamelessly, he held up his mug before he was even fully seated.

"The children go first," Lily said in a long-suffering voice. "Violet."

"Thanks Mum," Vi mumbled, listlessly adding a few marshmallows to the mix. She held her mug close as the sound of thundering footsteps indicated that the rest of the Potter brood was approaching.

Lily poured out another cup. "Here you go, Harry."

"Thanks Mrs – er… Mrs Potter," Harry said, taking the mug with one quick glance at James. If James hadn't known better, he would've said the kid felt guilty for getting his drink served before him – but surely that couldn't be right?

Lily gave Harry a small smile. "Please, call me Lily. Would you like –"

With a victorious laugh, Anna barged in through the door, effectively cutting off anything else Lily was going to say.

"Me first!" she shouted. She threw herself on her chair and stuffed several marshmallows into her mouth before she'd even caught her breath. Lily narrowed her eyes at her daughter but poured her a cup nonetheless.

"Not fair," Sam whined, last to join the table. "Anna pushed me, Mummy! I was first."

"Tough luck, kiddo. Life's not fair," Anna said, pulling a face at her brother.

"Ugh, Anna, do you know how stupid you sound when you try to copy Uncle Padfoot?" Vi grumbled, reinvigorated after a couple of sips of hot chocolate.

Anna had clearly noticed her sister's change of mood as well. "Everyone watch out, Violence Potter is back!" she said.

"Don't call me that," Vi snapped back.

"Or what?" Anna replied cheekily – but she stopped seeing Lily's glare.

James judged it was time for him to step in. He rather regretfully put down his mug.

"You know what I'd like?" he asked mildly. He looked around the table, stopping shy of the corner where the boy sat. If he turned his head just so, he could pretend that this was just an ordinary Thursday afternoon in July, instead of one of the weirdest days of his whole bloody life.

"No, what?" Sam asked, always the eager one. James smiled at him.

"I'd like to know how your mum's research trip went," he said, an eyebrow raised towards Lily.

Predictably, within seconds of Lily starting to describe her latest lab visit, Vi hopped off her chair.

"Can I be excused?"

And without waiting for an answer, she put her mug in the sink and slinked away.

"Me too, please?" Anna said – but before she could make it to the door, James grabbed her by the scruff of her neck.

"Put your mug away first. And be nice to your sister," he said.

"I'm always nice to her," Anna replied, slipping from under her father's grasp and sneaking out of the door.

This only left Sam. He beamed at his parents, delighted to be the centre of attention. He had a chocolate moustache that stretched from one ear to the next.

James turned back to Lily. "So, that lab…?"

Taking her cue, Lily picked up where she'd left off, recounting the progress they'd made with rendering CT scans compatible with magic and how she could use the findings for her own experimental spells on other machines. As ever when she spoke of her work, her eyes shone, and she was gesturing wildly with her hands.

James felt himself relax ever so slightly, Lily's familiar enthusiasm washing away some of the eerie strangeness of the day. He leaned back on his chair and his gaze slipped from Lily to land on the boy.

Harry seemed transfixed. His eyes followed Lily's every move. His mug stood forgotten in front of him, he'd barely had a sip. No wonder he was so skinny, James couldn't help but thinking, running his eyes over the boy's thin frame. He caught himself wishing he'd thought to put down the result of his diagnostic spell on paper.

"So, you're basically trying to bridge the gap between magical research and Muggle technology?" Harry asked suddenly.

Lily smiled at him. "That's right. I mostly focus on the cross between Muggle medicine and magical healing – an old idea, really, but the constant progress in Muggle medical technology keeps us on our toes. The team I'm part of does research in all sorts of other sectors too – climate change, electronics – but I'm far from an expert in those areas."

"That's… that's fascinating," Harry said, and to James's surprise, he sounded genuinely interested. "I have a friend who'd be very interested in what you do."

"It wouldn't happen to be one Hermione Granger by any chance?" Lily asked.

Harry's eyes widened and he hastily dropped his gaze back to the table, and James realised that he was scared to have given away one of his friends.

Lily had caught on as well, James could tell at a glance, but she continued as if she hadn't.

"She applied to do an apprenticeship with me starting in September, alongside attending a course at a Muggle university," she said casually. "The girl is driven like no-one I've ever met."

James gave a snort of laughter. "And that's saying something, considering you know Sirius."

The boy's face snapped up, and James found himself staring straight into vivid green eyes – brighter and somehow even more striking than his wife's.

"You know Sirius, don't you?" James asked cautiously, studying the boy's reaction.

But before Harry could answer, Sam's fluty voice piped up next to him, unusually serious: "In Harry's world, Uncle Padfoot died."

That gave James a shock. His heart knocked against his ribcage once as if it were trying to burst out, before stopping, and starting again beating madly. James looked at Harry for confirmation. The boy's expression was entirely closed off, old and weary.

"He did," he confirmed, his tone flat.

Dead. In the boy's world, Sirius was dead.

"What happened?" James whispered.

The boy shrugged and looked away – without the piercing green gaze pinned on him, James felt like he could breathe more freely.

"It's a long story."

"We have time…"

The boy gave a resigned sigh. He seemed to choose his words carefully. "He was duelling his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, in the Department of Mystery. He fell through the Veil…"

"The Veil?" James repeated.

"The Veil in the Chamber of Death… I tried to catch him," the boy said, and something flickered across his face. Pain. He looked back at James, his eyes pleading to believe him. "But I was too late. I'm sorry…"

"I'm sure you did everything you could, darling," Lily said, shattering the trance that James had found himself under. "That must have been an awful thing to witness."

At her words, the boy's shoulders tensed. A flash of fury crossed his face, he opened his mouth – but then shut it with a snap, his anger fading as quickly as it had come. He looked utterly defeated.

"I finished my hot chocolate," Sam announced, breaking the room's tense silence. He jumped off his chair. "Can I please show Harry my Lego?"

James caught Lily's eye.

The boy was wandless, and so far had shown no sign of wanting to hurt anyone. The spells James had performed had been clear enough – the boy hadn't been lying when he'd said he wasn't a Death Eater, not that James had been able to share that particular discovery with Lily yet, with Anna's bursting into the kitchen at the worst possible moment. And anyway, Death Eaters weren't the only ones with less than noble motives – and that was the crux of the matter, the one thing James hadn't been able to work out at all yet: what did the boy want? And why, in Merlin's name, had he chosen to follow Sam and come here of all places?

Lily cleared her throat. "Why don't you bring down the box you got for your birthday and start setting it up in the living room?" she suggested, as if reading James's mind – left unsaid, was the fact that they would be able to monitor them through the open kitchen door.

As Lily got up to show Harry to their living room, James sat back on his chair and took a deep breath. What an absolute bloody mess this was, he thought running a hand down his face.