InsaneJournal

There was something very surprising and only a little unsettling about finding yourself transported from where you’d just been when you hadn’t meant to apparate and hadn’t touched a portkey. The sensation of leaving the home he shared with Lily to arrive on a bloody spaceship was entirely unlike either of those would have felt, at any rate, which only made it feel all the more unreal. Then again, it wasn’t every day you found yourself suddenly almost two centuries in the future with no warning or even an inkling that such a thing was possible. Fortunately, James Potter was nothing if not adaptable and he decided it would be fun to have new place to explore. Surely, Lily would be along right after him and Remus, too, he hoped. The nice liaison had already told him Peter and Sirius were here.

Exploring was just what he had in mind to be doing when he found himself standing face to face with his double. He looked just like James, more or less, maybe a few years older at most. It was a close enough likeness that James felt rather like he was staring in a mirror and it caused him to blink, lose track of his ability to speak for a moment and perhaps do a little staring before he opened his mouth at last.

“Er, hello.”

Harry wasn't sure what to make of any of this. It was like something out of a science fiction novel. One minute he was sitting down at his desk at the ministry with a hot cup of coffee, and the next he was waking up on a space ship in the future. If he didn't know any better he might worry someone had slipped him some kind of hallucinogenic potion.

When he got ready to leave, he nearly ran into someone who was extremely familiar to him and yet he didn't really know who he was. "Hullo," Harry said carefully, squinting a bit and then his eyes widened as he realized how he knew who this other man was. "Uh, wow."

That made exactly one of them who understood what was going on here. James still hadn’t a bloody clue why the man standing before him looked like his near twin. “Er, sorry, I don’t.. Who are you?” he asked, rather blunt but he didn’t really know a better way to ask the question. It wasn’t like this was something he’d ever experienced before.

What should he say, Harry wondered. Should he lie? Wasn't there a manifest with everyone listed? He scratched the back of his neck. "I'm Harry," he said after a moment. "Harry Potter. Are you - James - by any chance?"

“Harry?” He scratched the back of his own neck in almost an exact mirror of the other man’a movement. “Yeah, I'm James Potter,” he said, starting to work it out at last, but still confused. He and Lily had just been married a year and they'd talked about having kids after the war, maybe, but so far the closest they'd come to it was getting a cat. “We’re related, yeah?” he said, strongly suspecting it was more than that. Harry was his spitting image, but aside from that, it occurred to him that there was something else very familiar about him, too. His eyes were Lily’s.

He was talking to his father. His father was here. Alive. Talking to him. Harry had been told Ginny was here, had been on his way to go find her, make sure she was all right, and now this. He had been through so much in his life but none of it could have prepared him for this. "Uh, yeah, you're my father."

Harry cleared his throat. "Sorry, sorry. Uh, Miss Carter, who I talked to when I woke up, she explained something about timelines and alternate universes and everything but I didn't really understand it until now. Because you're here, right here. How?"

“Same way as you, I suppose,” James offered with a shrug. This was mad, meeting a son you didn't know you were going to have yet, but he supposed if waking up centuries in the future was possible, so was meeting someone from your own future who'd been brought here in the same way.

“Guess I probably look awfully young to you,” he realized, thinking aloud as he tried to work it all out. He hoped he was a good dad, at least, even if he was sure he was doing a rubbish job of it now.

Harry blinked and almost blurted out that he looked the same as Harry ever knew him but realized that meant telling James - telling his father - that he was dead. He wasn't so sure that was a good idea at all. "Well, uh, you look all right to me," he said with a shrug.

James grinned at that, thrown off by all of this enough to settle for that answer. “This is brilliant!” he said, “You've got to tell me all about you! Do you have any siblings? Do you play quidditch? I want to hear everything!”

That was overwhelming. The whole thing was overwhelming. Harry had flashbacks to his fifth year, when things were being kept from him, things he really should have known. "Are you sure?" he asked, scratching his chin and pushing his glasses up his nose. "I mean, do you think it's a good idea to know everything about the future?"

“Yeah, I do,” he said without thinking. “Well, maybe not everything about the future, but about you? We’re here on the same ship. Why shouldn’t I want to go to know you?” Not that whether something was a good idea was always his first consideration. Yeah, he’d matured a lot over the last few years, but he did still have a tendency to leap before looking pretty often.

The problem was that knowing about him was too tied up in knowing everything, especially the part of everything that included his parents being dead and Voldemort and everything. He rubbed his forehead, his scar, out of habit. "Well, all right," he said, "maybe we should walk and try and find our quarters and I'll tell you." He started off toward the left in the corridor even if he didn't know where he was going. "No siblings, just me. I did play Quidditch, seeker, but I'm an auror now."

James nodded, looking at the device he’d been given. “I’m in D37, what about you?” There was a map on the device as well and even if this PADD thing wasn’t familiar to him, he did know how to follow a map, at least.

He turned to Harry would a look of pride on his face when he mentioned quidditch and being an auror. Maybe he’d known his kid all of 30 seconds, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be pleased at his successes, too. “Well, it sounds like we hit perfection of our first try,” he commented, beaming proudly at his son, only half joking.

Harry double checked the number he was given and said it. When he looked back to James, he felt a little sick to his stomach. "Yeah on the first time, sure," he echoed, unsure what else to say. "So uh - when are you from?" he asked. "Before I was born, right?"

“Yeah,” James nodded. “Your mum and I talked about having kids, after the war, but we’ve only just been married a year now. We’ve got a cat, but that’s about as domestic as we’ve gotten. I’m glad to know we’ll get around to it eventually. Always thought I’d be a brilliant parent.”

Harry didn't think it took them too long before having him, but he didn't bring that up. Instead, he just nodded a few times. "Uh - hey look, we have a lot of time to catch up, right? I was told my girlfriend is on board and I need to make sure she's okay."

James tried to hide his disappointment and he just nodded his head. “Oh, yeah, of course,” he said, clapping Harry cheerfully on the soldier. He’d be the same way if Lily was here and he did want to connect with Sirius and Peter. He and Harry could catch up later.

"It's not a big ship and we're all here so I'm sure it won't be long before we run into each other again." Truly, Harry had absolutely no bloody idea what he was supposed to do in this situation at all. He raced a hand through his hair, eyes wide behind his glasses. "Right, uh, I go this way I think!"

James nodded, giving Harry a short wave as he turned in the direction of his own room.