James started as a voice sounded behind him, jolting him out of his time-based musings. His fingers faltered on the mug he was selecting from the cabinet, sending the white porcelain handle slipping from grip. James caught it instinctively, unthinkingly, already mid-turn as his brain caught up with his heart or gut, or whatever other part of him that was reeling from that single word.
Dad.
He'd spoken to him on that journal thing, obviously. And it was clearly possible. Likely, even. James had a young son, and now he was in the future. It stood to reason that that young son would suddenly be not-so-young.Time tends to do that, Prongs, a very Sirius-like voice drawled in the back of his head. Funny, that. And yes, perhaps he'd been avoiding thinking about it too much, choosing instead of obsess over the void he'd arrived from, because imagining Harry as anything but five months old was just... he wasn't sure what it was.
But there wasn't any avoiding it now.
He stood there, cradling the cup, probably doing an impression of a particularly stupid goldfish as he gazed across at the young man just a few metres away. The Harry that stood there (because even if the paranoid, war-torn part of James' brain was screaming at him not to get sucked in, there was another part of him that was already convinced) had a shock of dark hair with a life of its own, like his. They had the same jaw, the same mouth, same build. There was even something of Euphemia Potter in his eyebrows, and the eyes... James' heart turned over. He'd know those eyes long after he'd forgotten his own name.
"Harry?" He croaked, idiotically. He was staring. He should really stop staring.