Harry Potter One Shots

Across the Universe

All rights belong to the author, Mira mirth

James pours Firewhiskey into two glasses and sits down on the couch, extending one tumbler towards his unbidden, but not entirely unwelcome guest.

It is the only thing they can do under the circumstances, really. James's head swims. Inter-dimensional travel. A young man, claiming to be Harry Potter, refusing to believe in James's or Lily's existence. His eldest son, alive, although he had been killed on Halloween, 1981. Dumbledore's frown. Amazement in Lily's brilliant eyes. And hope. Hope that this is somehow his son, returned to him, through a miracle.

Only it isn't his son at all. Harry – might as well call him by his given name – gracefully accepts the whiskey and sips with the air of a person who's drunk a lot of this stuff. He's got trademark messy hair, Lily's green eyes, but he's thin, with premature stress lines and an unfriendly disposition. Bespectacled eyes too guarded for a boy of his age, reflexes too honed. This boy isn't at all like Aaron, his and Lily's fourteen year old child. They surely look alike, except that Aaron's eyes are hazel, but Aaron is wilful, smiling, careless and free, the way James and Sirius had been at school. Harry reminds James of Mad-Eye Moody, if anyone at all.

Whoever has been taking care of him in James's stead, they haven't done a very good job.

His son – but not his son – but yet his son – isn't in a hurry to start a conversation, so James thinks over what to say. Questions about Harry's life seem a tad too personal, whether or not Harry is supposed to be his eldest son.

Son and heir.

"So you are eighteen, then?" James asks, opting for a neutral question to start with.

Harry simply nods.

"Dumbledore says our timelines must have diverged on Halloween, 1981. When in your dimension, Lily and I... in this dimension, it was you who..."

"Died," Harry finishes, seemingly with no qualms when talking about death. "Which might be a good thing."

"How dare you!" James erupts immediately, stung by such a cavalier approach to a subject that still brings tears to his and Lily's eyes, after all these years.

"Your world is happier," Harry points out, unfazed. "Neville seems to be doing a good job of being the Boy-Who-Lived."

His voice is strangely monotonous.

"And you weren't?" James asks.

Harry's mouth twists into a smile that looks so ugly it could belong to Snape.

"In my own way, I was absolutely fantastic."

James stares at this boy-man in front of him and suddenly realizes that he doesn't understand. He doesn't talk to people like this, in strange half-clipped phrases, loaded with meanings, masking some things and saying others bluntly. James is open in expressing his emotions, and appropriately silent on topics of death, destruction and Voldemort. Not that he doesn't have strong feelings about Voldemort. Still, it's a conversation for the Order, for adults. He gets a strange feeling that he and this boy are speaking different languages.

He is almost glad when the Order convenes to discuss the situation. He feels awkward sitting with this boy one on one. He is an Auror, a professional and an adult, and yet he finds himself oddly lacking in something important when dealing with this strange boy who is and is not his son.

Predictably, Mad-Eye Moody and Snape are the two Order members most suspicious of Harry's presence, but Harry doesn't seem to mind. In fact, the corner of his mouth quirks up in what could be called a smile. Harry steadily avoids looking at James, Lily or Sirius. Lily is distraught by the treatment, James can tell, and yet Lily hasn't spent an hour in the boy's company, trying to make conversation. If she had, maybe she would understand that this would not be the happy ending they were all wishing for. James is at once outraged that Harry is ignoring his mother and glad that he doesn't pretend everything would be okay.