What a Curious Meeting

~*~

Six Aurors Apparated onto the grounds no less than three minutes after the alarm went off, as they were instructed to do. The three minutes were indeed a considerable amount of time when defending someone's life, but even the great Harry Potter's safety could not inspire miracles.

When they came, they found an exacerbated Mr. Potter arguing with two school age boys.

"Have you two been living in a cave or something?" He was pointing a wand at one boy, and holding the other back by the forehead, using the palm of his hand.

"Honestly, man, let me into my house!" the first boy screamed.

Nymphadora Tonks coughed loudly. Today her hair was in brown ringlets that looked more than a little frizzy. "Wotcher, Harry! We had an alarm?"

"Oh, hullo Tonks." Harry gave a wave with his wand before quickly raising it back to eye level of the boy. "It was just my wards, you know. These two just wanted to visit, I guess. They seem harmless enough, nothing I can't handle."

The two boys loudly protested their unfair label.

"Well, if you say so, Harry. You know, we're available if you need us."

"Of course, Tonks, of course. Nice to see you all again. Good day!" He gave a friendly wave to the other five Aurors. They stared blankly at him; he stared back. "Well...shouldn't you be going? Doing, erm, Ministry stuff?"

"Right, right!" they all chorused at once. Tonks gave Harry a small smile and a quick "nice to see you, Harry!" before Apparating along with the rest of the Aurors.

The boy under Harry's hand sniggered a bit. "Ooooh! Who's she?" He winked to the other boy.

Harry gave an angry glance at the boy. "She's a friend, for god's sake! What, are all young boys hormonal idiots?" The two boys glanced at each other and again sniggered. "Oh, come on inside, we obviously aren't getting anywhere out here." He waved his wand at the second boy. "And you can come too."

"Gee, thanks for the invitation," he growled.

"You can come past the wards now, you idiot," Harry said, clearly aggravated.

"Oh," he said sheepishly, and the other boy poked him in the side.

"C'mon," said Harry as he began to walk back to the house, "I guess I can't get rid of you two. And I'm rather surprised that you," he said, pointing to the boy who had previously been under his hand, "were able to get past my wards."

"I'm just special like that," the boy said, nodding. "But you must be a really big man, I mean, even compared to me!" The other boy coughed and elbowed him. "I mean, having Aurors at your call! Man, high Ministry officials get that much security! Who are you?"

The other boy gaped at him, while Harry laughed. "You boys must be idiots."

"We're not idiots!" protested the boy who had spoken before. "I happen to come from a long line of very evil people!"

Harry laughed again. "Is that so? And which line would that be?"

The boy puffed up his chest. "I am Sirius, of the noble Black family!" The other boy began to laugh at the idea of "noble" and "Black family" being in the same sentence. But obviously, Harry did not find it amusing.

He whipped Sirius around, and held his wand mere inches from his face. "Do you think you're being funny, eh? You little punk, I suppose you can't even appreciate any sort of history. Well, I don't think it's funny in the least."

"Look, man, I'm sorry for whatever I said, but seriously," he didn't even pause to appreciate the pun, "I'm telling the truth!"

"Sirius Black would be an old man by now. You should really check your facts," he turned to the other boy. "And you! Who are you today? Hmmm?!"

He gave a small glance at Sirius and set his eyes into slits. "James Potter."

This in turn caused Harry to set his eyes into slits himself. "This isn't funny. Both of you." He pushed the boys in front of him and poked them both in the back with his wand successively. "Walk."

Harry was leading the boys by the tip of his wand. He sat down at a long table and directed the boys to do the same. "So let me get this straight. You claim to be to be Sirius Black and James Potter. You two really must be idiots unless you have some explanation to give me."

"Oh! We do have an explanation to give don't we?" said Sirius incredulously.

"That's right!" said James, "I mean that's why we came here. We were trying to get to Hogwarts. But when we went to the barrier at platform nine and three-quarters we kind of... got stuck."

Harry looked at the two boys. "You want me to believe that one minute you're at King's Cross station and then next minute you're here?"

James started off. "Well, it didn't really happen like that. We actually poofed-" He was interrupted By Sirius.

"'Poofed?' James, We didn't 'poof.' We appeared. The barrier kind of didn't work. It wouldn't let us through."

Harry still seemed angry. "Even if you say that barrier didn't let you through to the train station, you still managed to get here somehow."

James' face was getting red. "Look man, won't you leave us alone, please? We don't know how we got here. Why do you have to keep asking us questions?"

Harry grabbed James by the shoulder and spun him around. "You two obviously don't appreciate the kind of situation that you are in. You could be trying kill me. I could have sent you two with back with the Aurors, and then you'd have to deal with the Ministry. So be glad I'm the one asking questions and not an Auror."

Sirius spun around too. "Man, did anyone ever tell you that you've got problems communicating with people? You need to be nice to people to get results." Harry grumbled. "And what I really wanna know is, where are we? I mean, this looks like James' house, but it's not. But that tree, that's James' tree, even if it does a look a bit older than it used to. But that can't be. Oh, man, James, I think I'm having a brain bust."

James grabbed hold of Sirius' shoulders and shook. Sirius sighed in relief and slumped back into his chair.

Harry looked inquisitively from one boy to the other. "Okay. Let's try this out,you're Sirius Black and James Potter. You somehow disappeared from King's Cross and appeared here." Here he paused, thinking, and counting on fingers. James and Sirius sniggered again. It was really starting to get on Harry's nerves. "About forty years later. Is this making any sense to you?"

"Woah woah woah, man. How did those forty years factor in?" James asked, surprised.

Harry gave the two boys a rueful smile. "It's not the sixties anymore, boys."

"Then when?"

"It's September 1^st 2006."

Both boys turned to each other and gasped. "We're old!" cried Sirius.

"We're almost fifty!" sobbed James.

Sirius suddenly stopped with a moment of clarity. "What happened?"

Harry sat at the end of the table, watching the two boys increasing uncomfortably. "Erm. You know what? I have no idea."

James wiped an eye with his sleeve. "Thanks for that fact. Like we didn't already know. Let's face it, you're a rather clueless adult."

This comment cheered up Sirius a bit too.

Harry sighed. "I'm contacting Dumbledore. With any luck, the students won't be at Hogwarts yet, and he'll be in his office." He stood up and threw some powder into the fire. Sticking his head into the flames, he yelled, "Albus Dumbledore's office!"

James and Sirius were only left with the tempting view of Harry's backside. Sirius looked at James, silently pleading, but James firmly shook his head. Obviously disappointed, Sirius slowly put the dungbombs back into his bag that he had quietly taken out a minute before.

A few moments later, Harry turned back around through the flames and looked pointedly at the two boys, though with a bit of a comical effect, with ashes covering his straight nose and cheeks. "Professor Dumbledore says that we should come see him. Come along! Through the fireplace, and don't you dare try anything funny."

Sirius shook his head sadly. "Man, you have no sense of fun." He walked through the flames, James pulling on his shirt.

When they entered the room, James and Sirius gasped. They had never seen any space filled with so much... "Junk," James said out loud, pausing to peer into a foamy white globe with an ancient language written on it.

Albus Dumbledore sat in a chair next to the fire. He had charmed some chairs around the fire, and was sitting pleasantly on a large leather reading chair in green leather, sucking on a candy. "So," he exclaimed at once, "Harry tells me that he's had some visitors. James Potter and Sirius Black. So nice to see you again!"

James smiled politely, sitting in a rich red armchair next to Sirius. "But Sir, I don't think we've ever met you."

"Nonsense, boy! According to Harry here, you were trying to get to platform nine and three-quarters. Do you think you never made it to Hogwarts?" He laughed genially.

Sirius gaped at him. "What do you mean?"

"Let me see," Dumbledore began, fingering another candy, "If my memory serves me right, you two boys were found standing on platform nine and three-quarters, on September 1^st, 1969, five minutes before the train left. You met with your parents, who directed you onto the train. All the while you were a bit disoriented, but physically unharmed. According to later accounts, you were actually mugged on the way into the platform, and the culprit stole some of your dungbombs." He nodded to the bag next to Sirius' feet. "James' parents owled Madam Pomfrey after you left, to tell her to keep watch of any abnormal behavior from you two. And that's quite that."

"So...this never happened?" asked James.

"Yes. Quite convenient, isn't it? We don't want to go around ruining the space-time continuum, do we?" James and Sirius vehemently shook their heads. "No, of course not," Dumbledore said, smiling. "I hate to be rude, but under these conditions, would you mind taking a dose of Veritaserum?"

"Well..." Sirius began, but on second thought decided not to continue, and begrudgingly took the dose, along with James.

"So," Dumbledore started, "Who are you two?"

"Sirius Black," Sirius supplied.

"And James Potter," James added. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

"Well!" Dumbledore's eyes were twinkling. "It indeed is true! Harry, it looks like we have some visitors from the past!"

"But Professor," began Harry, "how can we be sure? There are ways to circumvent Veritaserum. How do we know that they're really who they claim to be? You know as well as I do that if a person believes what they are saying under the influence of Veritaserum, they say it, even if it's not true."

Dumbledore sighed. "Harry, I'm afraid that years of worry have made you paranoid." James and Sirius overtly nodded their heads at this comment. "If someone was indeed trying to kill you, why would they take the form of an eleven year old boy?"

Harry shrugged helplessly. "Maybe they were trying to...throw me off guard?"

"No, I don't think so, Harry. There are few people who would go to these extremes just to have a chance to kill you."

James and Sirius looked at each other in confusion. From the sound of this conversation, it probably would have been better said without them in the room. But that had not happened.

Sirius raised his hand. "I have a question."

Dumbledore turned to him. "Yes?"

"Why does Harry have people trying to kill him? Are you a spy, man? Like, running around the world, working for Professor Dumbledore to steal ancient mystical artifacts and beat up evil geniuses who want to destroy the rain forest, fighting for Peace and Love?"

Harry gave Sirius a queer look. James sighed. "Man, I don't think he's a spy. He's too skinny. Maybe he's a rock star, and a crazed fan is trying to kill him and turn his skin into a tie." He paused for a moment, appreciating the looks from Sirius, Harry, and even Professor Dumbledore. "I read about it in a magazine once, you know."

"Erm. No, I'm not a spy. Nor a rock star." Harry said this slightly wistfully.

"Though," Dumbledore added, "he does a rousing rendition of 'He's a Jolly Good Fellow!' I was quite moved by it myself."

Harry blushed, cursing under his breath.

Dumbledore gave the two boys a hard look. "Well, it really is only fair if we explain some things to you." Harry loudly sighed. Dumbledore gave him a sharp look. "Well, would you like to explain, then?"

He gestured helplessly. "I suppose so. Er. I defeated Voldemort a few years ago for the second time, making me pretty much the savior of the human race."

"Savior?" James said lightly. "Isn't that a little much now, Mr. Egotistical?"

"Who's Voldemort?" Sirius asked, ignoring James and Harry, who were staring at each other with deep contempt.

"A very evil wizard, Mr. Black," Dumbledore supplied, "who wanted to kill all Muggles and Muggleborns, because he felt they were an 'inferior' race. He and his followers killed many, many people." Dumbledore's eyes met with Harry's for a moment, filled with sadness. "Before he finally was defeated by Harry in his seventh year. And because of that, Harry is still occasionally targeted by some of Voldemort's followers who were not arrested."

"Bitter, you see," Harry added, "that they lost. They think that by sending me a flesh-eating garbage pail, it'll make them feel better." He held up a hand, where a long pale scar was visible. James and Sirius sniggered, but both internally agreed that it wasn't as impressive as the doohickey on Harry's forehead.

"Sounds like my mother," Sirius said gloomily.

James glared at Sirius. Did he think that helped their case at all? "But we're not trying to kill you! We like Muggles, they're grand! We love the Beatles and nudie magazines!" James exclaimed.

"Of course not, dear boy! Only that your appearance here has obviously caused Harry some alarm," Dumbledore explained.

"Why?" James asked.

Sirius' eyes widened. "Do you...know us? Well, not 'us,' us, but old, fiftyish us, with gray hair and a potbelly and...old?"

"I," Harry began, his eyes growing white, "I, did. At least, I knew you, Sirius Black."

"Am I graying? Fat? Senile?!"

"Sirius!" James exclaimed at once. "Didn't you listen?! He used...the past tense."

The color drained from the boy's square, shining face, drastically contrasting with his shaggy back hair. "Am I ..dead?"

The room was silent. James turned his head away when Sirius tried to catch his eyesight, though he could see a look of deep surprise on his friend's face from a reflection on a nearby globe. Dumbledore was the first to speak. "Time is the destroyer of age, and the creator of history, Mr. Black. I am sorry to say that you are indeed part of both."

James stared at the fireplace. "If Sirius is...dead. Where am I?"

Harry stared at the boy in shock. "I am sorry, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore began, but stopped when he saw James' face.

"No! No, don't tell me that we get thrown into this sick, messed up future, and we don't even get to live to be old and gray and fat, yelling about the good times and complaining of rheumatism! You can't tell me that I died, not even living a life, having a family! No!"

"You had a life. A happy, noble life. And a family." Dumbledore looked to Harry for confirmation. Harry had turned away. "You can't feel that your life was a waste. In fact, both you and Sirius lead exemplary lives. You had friends, family. You had...a son."

James seemed to brighten up a bit at this news. "Did I now! Did he like to play pranks?"

"No."

"Well, I suppose we can't all be perfect. Did he play Quidditch?"

"Yes, Seeker, actually, and quite good. Played a season of professional, but that wasn't what he wanted to do for the rest of his life."

"Then what did he do?"

Dumbledore smiled at this. "Oh, he lives off his trust fund and his fame. He likes to do nothing, and he actually excels at it. Apparently he also has a book deal in the works." Harry scowled at the window.

"Present tense!" Sirius gleefully observed.

"He seems like an okay guy," James observed. "I might like to meet him."

"But my dear boy!" Dumbledore said, putting another candy in his mouth, "you already have!" His eyes twinkled happily as he caught Harry's green ones. Harry had finally turned back into the conversation and was looking at Dumbledore with a look of shock, relief and anger, mixed together. Sirius mistakenly thought they were having a moment, and observed the two for a second, before making a realization.

"James," Sirius breathed at last, the color finally returning slowly to his face, "man, he has your hair!"

The young boy looked at Harry's face and saw his own straight nose, narrow jaw, and thick, bold eyebrows, which were shot up in surprise. "You mean...I'm a father? I'm his father?" He let the statement sit in the room for a minute, and then suddenly jumped up from his seat and hugged Harry.

Harry looked at the boy in his arms. Turning to Professor Dumbledore helplessly, he said, "Sir, when I used to imagine meeting my father, he wasn't an eleven year old boy!"

Dumbledore gave Harry a long look. "Harry?"

"Yes, Professor?"

"Stop being so damn picky."

Harry sighed. He looked down at the boy who was still hugging him. He was his father, after all. Even if, even if...

"Oh man!" Sirius exclaimed, "stop thinking about it so much, or your brain will explode!"

Harry nodded, and hugged the boy back. His father.