Chapter Text
James vaults over the purple sofa, leaps up three stairs at a time, and blows by Moody, still on watch, with nothing but a, “be right back!”
Suddenly he is desperate, aching, for Lily’s presence and he honestly can’t wait another second. The utter incredibility of tonight’s events is threatening to overwhelm him and he just needs to be with her, immediately.
He disapparates a single step outside of the wardline and arrives on the threshold of their flat. He unspells and throws the door open to find his girlfriend lounging on the couch with a book, nursing a glass of wine, as if their pub night of less than two hours earlier had never happened. James, already struggling with the concept of linear time, gamely decides to just not think about it.
“Hey Jam,” she says distractedly in greeting.
“Lils,” he breathes. It comes out somewhere between elated and terrified, and gets Lily’s attention immediately.
“Jamie?”
James strides over and hugs her tight to his chest, buries his face in her long, soft hair. He’s struggling to find words so he just holds on harder instead.
“James?” Lily tries again. “Everything okay with your impromptu mission?”
“Erm. Nobody’s hurt? But we need you to come to the safehouse and brew a potion there.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy enough.”
James only nods into the side of her neck because he's not quite ready yet to expound upon the extenuating circumstances.
Lily pats his back. “I’ll need to take a sober-up first, love, so you’re going to have to let me go.”
The idea of letting her go has never sounded less appealing. In fact, James is overcome by the urge to ensure he never has to again. Knowing what they become to each other, and also knowing how short their time could be, makes him feel like he has to seize this day, and the future mother of his child, and just hold on.
It’s an impulsive decision that will ruin Sirius’ and Remus’ carefully-made plans, but, well, James is no stranger to ruining those anyway. He lets Lily up to rummage through the medicine cabinet and runs to his wardrobe. By the time Lily’s got her boots and cloak on, he’s ready to go as well. They apparate to just outside the wards, leaving, James realizes, a walk of only about 50 meters over dewy dark grass during which to warn Lily about what awaits her.
“Right, so, just so you know,” he begins, and clears his throat. “You’ll be brewing a paternity potion for one of two wizards we found at the site of a powerful magical phenomenon. Dumbledore originally brought me in to identify him because he’s very obviously a Potter.”
Lily hums uncertainly. “You know that paternity potions can only tell you whether any two people are father and child?”
“Yeah, I know.” They’ve reached the door to the safe house. James stretches out a hand and stops Lily from going in. The other hand, he runs through his hair. “The thing is, well, we think he’s my son.”
After a long moment of utter shock, Lily’s face crumples, but morphs quickly into indignation. “A child?” She blusters. ”Whose? And, and how? And—”
“He’s not a child,” James blurts out. “He’s… We think he’s a time traveler.”
Lily blinks owlishly at him. “Ah.” Her face un-crumples and her shoulders drop back down to a normal height, which seems like a good sign. “Maybe we should just go in and see him.”
James nods dumbly and follows her in, past an ever-vigilant Moody, to a blue door on the left. Inside the plain but clean potions lab stands Dumbledore along one wall, across from Harry and Malfoy, who are still bound to their chairs. Sirius has both hands planted atop the centre workbench, shoulders thrust forward to loom over a grimly defiant Harry.
“Black,” Malfoy is saying. “If even Potter says it’s gruesome, you should trust him that you don’t want to know.”
James clears his throat to announce their arrival and the row ceases abruptly. Sirius glances guiltily at them and steps back to lean against the wall by Dumbledore.
Lily is stopped dead in the doorway, looking at Harry. James can’t see her face but he can peer over her shoulder and Harry is staring at her like she’s the last thing he’ll see before he dies. His jaws are clenched fiercely together but his eyes are still tearing up and he just looks terribly, hopelessly overcome.
“Oh,” Lily says softly. “He does look quite a lot like you, doesn’t he?”
“Except he has your eyes,” James adds in the same tone of voice: reverent.
Lily hums. “He does.” She walks over to crouch before Harry. “I’m Lily. But you probably already knew that.”
“Draco Malfoy,” Malfoy drawls. “How I’d love to shake your hand, if you’d just untie me…”
“Yeah, nice try," Sirius snorts.
Lily raises an eyebrow. “Pleasure.”
“This is Harry,” James offers, because it feels a bit wrong to make the boy introduce himself to his own mother.
“Hi Harry,” Lily says. She lays a careful hand on Harry’s shoulder and his eyelids flutter shut, though not before a few tears leak out.
James looks at them in that moment and feels indescribably full, like this is all he’s ever needed in his life: Lily and their son, and their love. Ropes notwithstanding. James is immensely grateful to have weathered the whole instant-suspicion-and-hate phase earlier tonight, to have given these two a chance to greet each other as they deserve.
Harry opens his eyes. “Hi mum,” he whispers.
“Oh dear,” Lily sighs. “That’s not how you look at a mum you’ve seen recently, is it?”
There’s one tremulous moment in which Harry only stares at her, and then he jerks his head down. It might be enough to hide the tears but it can’t disguise the shaking of his shoulders.
Lily leans in and tucks Harry’s head against her clavicle, cards her fingers gently through that Potter hair. “I’m sorry,” she says. James is dazzled by her ability to empathize, to feel love and loss on behalf of this boy she’s just met; to comfort him when he clearly needs her, regardless of the fact that motherhood is not yet a milestone she has personally crossed.
She turns her head towards James, who’s now leaning against the wall next to Padfoot, to support his gooey knees. “Is it really necessary to keep him tied up like this?” Lily asks.
James scratches awkwardly at his neck. “Technically, we haven’t completely confirmed he is who he says he is. Nor, for that matter, that we are who we say we are.”
Harry sucks in a shuddery breath. “If this is a Death Eater trap I’ll destroy every last one of you.”
Sirius barks out a laugh that breaks the tension in the room.
Lily sighs and stands back up. “Paternity potion, then?”
“Paternity potion,” James confirms.
Lily nods and starts selecting ingredients and laying them out on the worktable. She lights the fire, primes and fills the cauldron, and pulls out a knife.
Malfoy coughs significantly. “I can’t quite see the worktable from this angle,” he says. He sounds like he’s trying hard and just barely failing to cut down on that trademark Malfoy superciliousness.
James finds it rather amusing, to be honest. He transfigures the legs of Malfoy’s chair longer until he can see everything easily.
“Thank you,” Malfoy says imperiously. Then he side-eyes Harry, whose seat is now several inches lower than his, with a triumphant smirk. James rolls his eyes and transfigures Harry’s chair to the same height.
“I didn’t realize this was an exhibition,” Lily comments drily.
“I’m just the impartial assessor who will ensure it’s not a false-positive,” says Malfoy.
“Ah. In case this is a Death Eater trap.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, colour me pretty well concerned that a bunch of teenagers of my own child’s generation are still worried about Death Eaters in— what year are you from, supposedly?”
Malfoy raises a challenging eyebrow at Harry. Harry glares back at him. James wonders if now is a bad time to ask Lily what random vidyo means.
“1998,” Malfoy answers.
Lily whistles. “That’s a long time for a community as small as ours to be at war.”
“There was a period of peace there in between," Malfoy says, and shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
Lily nods casually, though her knuckles whiten on the grip of her knife. “Didn’t last though?”
When no one else seems inclined to elaborate, James coughs. “There was some talk of a resurrection.”
Lily nods again with a grimace and drops the subject. She swaps out her knife and starts smushing puffapod beans with the side of the new blade.
“You’re supposed to cut those up,” Malfoy says sharply.
“The pickled puffapod beans? Yes, I believe that’s what the standard recipe says, but you’ll release the juice much better by crushing them with the flat side of a silver dagger.”
Harry, who has seemed benignly uninterested in the rest of the potion-making process so far, suddenly gasps. It echoes loudly in the quiet of the lab, such that all eyes end up on him. “Where did you learn that?”
“An old friend of mine realized, I think. We used to experiment with potions quite a bit when we were younger, before…” she trails off awkwardly.
Snivellus, James thinks bitterly. He is nonetheless surprised to hear his son reach the same conclusion.
“Don’t tell me it was Snape?” Harry asks, sounding absolutely gobsmacked.
Lily glances up at him warily. “It was."
Harry looks like his entire world is crashing down around him; it’s honestly hilarious. James can practically feel Sirius’ amusement wafting off him in waves.
“You were friends with Snape? But— but why?”
They’re interrupted by a ringing peal of laughter from Sirius. “No need for paternity potions,” he guffaws. “That’s definitely your son, Prongs.”
“We grew up in the same neighborhood,” Lily explains with a sigh, looking more at her cutting board than at Harry. “He’s the one who taught me about magic. He was my best friend.”
“No,” Harry croaks. “No. No way. No. He’s a bitter old bullying git and a traitor and he called you a mudblood and HE KILLED DUMBLEDORE!” Harry ends on a roar.
Lily inhales sharply at that, eyes flashing. She looks almost desperate for Malfoy to contradict it, but he’s only barely stayed upright in his chair given how hard he just flinched; all he can manage at the moment is a sad shrug.
“Oh, Sev,” she says mournfully.
‘Sev,’ Harry mouths incredulously. He looks like he’s going to be sick.
Definitely my son, James thinks.
“We grew apart,” Lily offers in penance. “He got pulled into the Dark Arts and the Death Eaters. It… wasn’t unexpected, I guess, though I was devastated all the same.”
James watches Harry struggle and fail to acclimate to the concept that his mum was friends with Snape, and swallows down a surge of belated understanding for Lily that he never quite managed at sixteen. Harry hasn’t explained to them how or when Peter turned, after all. Has he, too, already been pulled into the Death Eaters?
“So,” Lily says lightly after several awkward minutes of quiet. “How did you two end up here, anyway?”
Malfoy looks at Harry. Harry looks at Malfoy. Both of them shrug. “There’s all sorts of strange artefacts in the Room of Hidden Things,” Malfoy says eventually. “We probably knocked into something during the fight.”
“Don’t exactly remember much,” Harry adds, still quite sullen over the Snape revelation.
Lily sprinkles in the last of the dandelion roots, stirs three times each direction, and sets a timer. “Okay, this will simmer for nine minutes.” She sits back down on a stool behind her. “Will you tell me about yourself in the meantime?”
Harry looks warily at her for a moment, but acquiesces. He starts talking, haltingly, clearly steering around some topics, though James can’t quite identify what they are. Nevertheless, James learns that his son is a Gryffindor (he already knew that, but he’s thrilled to hear it again), he likes treacle tart (classic Mama Evans), he has two best friends (NOT Malfoy, who looks supremely and hilariously offended at Lily’s innocent misunderstanding, given they did arrive here together), he’s a quidditch prodigy (Malfoy looks supremely and hilariously offended at that assertion as well, but, even more hilariously, he can’t deny it), he’s good at Defense Against the Dark Arts (practical! James, as a responsible father-to-be, approves), and he had a snowy owl named Hedwig until about ten months ago (definitely a bit of a bummer; James is relieved when Lily’s timer interrupts that explanation).
Finally, the potion is ready, and James cuts his finger to let three drops of blood into the cauldron. He then walks over to hand Harry the knife, casually placing himself between Harry and Lily, just in case, and spells off his bindings.
Harry sighs with the release of the ropes and stands stiffly. He looks at the knife with grim anxiety etched all over his face, turns his palm up as if ready to cut, hesitates, and looks back at Malfoy for some kind of reassurance.
“Three drops,” Malfoy says evenly.
Harry nods, holds his hand over the cauldron, grits his teeth, and cuts himself. The blood drips into the potion and turns it a blinding white. Harry steps back a bit, blinking his eyes.
“Congratulations,” Lily says softly. “It’s a boy.”
Harry raises his eyebrows at Malfoy, who nods. “That’s a positive.”
Something loosens in James’ shoulders. That’s really his son, he thinks. Harry, his son. Funny how it felt so real before and now, having received incontrovertible confirmation, it somehow feels surreal.
It only takes a second for Lily to carefully remove the knife from Harry’s grasp, set it down safely on the worktop, and sweep him into a hug. Harry grasps the fabric of her shirt and holds on to her for dear life. Sirius claps James on the shoulder and pushes him forward; he wraps his arms around Lily, sandwiching Harry between them.
They stay like that for what feels like hours, though it’s probably only a couple minutes, max, until they’re interrupted by an awkward but insistent throat clearing behind James.
“Am I just to remain tied up forever, then?” Malfoy drawls.
“Harry,” Dumbledore calls. “You are willing to vouch for Mr. Malfoy’s loyalties?”
Harry finally pulls himself away from his parents, looks at Malfoy, then at Dumbledore, and nods. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s a shit Death Eater. I reckon he’s been trying to defect for ages.”
Malfoy sniffs but he’s clearly too intelligent to refute the point, degrading though its presentation may be. “I’ll have you know I was forced into it to begin with,” he clarifies. “After you got my father arrested,” he adds with some heat.
Harry glares back at him. “After he got Sirius killed? I’m not sorry.”
A long, low groan announces Sirius’ reaction to that news. “Killed by fucking Lucy?” he whinges. “Fucking rough.”
“Erm,” says Harry, scratching at his neck. “Technically he only lured us to the battle? It was really Bellatrix who got the final blow. And the, erm, Veil of Death?”
“In the Department of Mysteries?” Dumbledore asks with intensity.
“Now there’s a cluedo solution for the ages,” Lily quips.
Sirius groans again.
Harry’s shoulders tense. “Yeah. There was a battle there.”
“Ahem,” Malfoy repeats. “Ropes?”
“Right-o, cuz,” Sirius says. He waves his wand and Malfoy’s restraints disappear.
Malfoy immediately springs up to rub at his wrists and ankles and chest, trying in vain to smooth out the wrinkles in his robes. “You didn’t happen to find a wand or two with us, did you?” he asks.
“I’m afraid not, dear boy,” Dumbledore says sadly.
Malfoy sighs. “Fucking typical.” He continues to grumble under his breath about something that sounds a whole lot like “Scarhead” and “Potter.”
“Harry,” says Dumbledore, like a crup with a bone, “what was the purpose of the battle in the Department of Mysteries?”
“It’s a bit of a long story."
“I think we’d like to hear it,” Lily says. “All of it. Let me just clean up the lab here and then why don’t we sit down and go over everything?” She vanishes the muck on the workstation, rubs the cutting board down, and then turns around to scrub the knives and cauldron out in the sink against the far wall. While she’s thusly occupied, James steps over behind her and kneels down.
“No way,” Malfoy breathes.
“This is definitely not how it was supposed to happen,” Harry whispers anxiously.
“Oh, come on,” Sirius groans. “We had a plan, Prongs! A good plan!”
James only looks over his shoulder to give him a sheepish but unrepentant grin.
“What’s that?” Lily says absently, rinsing the cauldron out. When nobody replies, she finally looks over.
And turns around completely to find James on one knee, ring in hand.
“Oh.” Her quiet breath of surprise is almost, but not quite, covered up by the clang of the forgotten cauldron falling into the sink.
“Lily Marie Evans,” James starts, embarrassed to hear his voice is already creaky with emotion. “I’ve seen the future tonight, our future, and he is strong and clever and loyal and wonderful, just like you.” He tears his eyes from Lily’s face, with effort, to smile softly at Harry. He’s wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, and James turns back around to find Lily doing the same thing. This small, beautiful congruency fills James’ chest even closer to bursting.
“Harry’s story was… darker and more awful than I could ever have imagined, but… no matter how dark this war gets, Lily, you will always be the light of my life. And no matter how long or short our lives end up being, and no matter how awful the end, I want you to know it’s all worth it, to fight and even die by your side. Because I found out tonight that I really will die for you, and it only made me more determined to live for you, too, to make sure you know every single day how much I love you. I’ve been waiting to marry you for years, Evans, and I might not have that many years left to wait, and I just refuse to wait any longer.”
He pauses for a steadying breath before the big question, but never gets around to answering it. “Of course I will, you daft sod,” Lily answers. James’ beaming smile is unaffected by her irreverent epithet.
“Just call him an arrogant toerag, why don’t you,” Sirius jeers.
“That’s enough from the peanut gallery,” Lily shoots back. She cups both hands around James’ face. “James Fleamont Potter, you have been shockingly wise tonight for how much of a toerag you truly were at fifteen.” She crooks a half-smile at Sirius’ triumphant hoots but otherwise ignores him. “I consider myself lucky to know the brave, steadfast, loving man you’ve matured into. And I’ll consider myself even luckier to be your wife.”
She leans down to kiss him and James surges up to meet her, to spin her around in his arms, warm, triumphant, ecstatic.
“Bollocks,” Harry mutters. “It’s official. I've meddled with time. Hermione’s gonna be so mad.”
“We already know you ruin everything, Potter,” Malfoy snarks, but his watery voice betrays his emotion.
“I can’t believe I got to witness my parents’ engagement live but had to share it with Malfoy. Of all the absurd things I’ve been through…”
James finally pulls back to let out a snort. Trust his own sprog to ruin the moment.
He pulls Lily’s hand away from his face and carefully, reverently, slides the ring onto it. It’s an old Potter heirloom, all topaz and rubies, but still elegant. It suits her, he thinks.
Lily kisses him again, then they finally turns to face their motley group of spectators: his teenage son (weird, but good), his best mate (annoying, but good), his headmaster (weird, but fine), and a Malfoy (annoying, but, he guesses, fine). Well, James tells himself, this is what he gets for ignoring Remus and Sirius’ carefully laid plans.
“Moony’s gonna be so mad he missed this,” Sirius remarks, as though following James’ train of thought. “We were all there together at pub night just hours ago and yet you waited for whatever this is, instead, where he’s not.”
James sighs. “I’ll just have to propose again with the original plan, then, won’t I?”
“Knowing you lot, this is actually the more sensible proposal,” Lily remarks drily, “so maybe I should be glad it happened first.”
“You wound me!” Sirius cries dramatically. “Oi, Harry, you’ll help us with the re-do, won’t you? We’ll need someone to fill in for Wormtail anyway.”
Harry flashes him a blinding smile that makes something in James’ chest ache. “Yeah, alright.”
“Brilliant,” Sirius says. “We need to go out and celebrate!”
James instantly agrees; Lily, responsibly, looks to Dumbledore for a dismissal.
“Congratulations to you both on your engagement,” Dumbledore rumbles, shaking their hands. “And far be it from me to keep you from a much deserved celebration. I daresay we can leave off further well-meaning interrogation of our new allies for later this week. However,” he says to Harry and Malfoy, “I’ll need to see to your temporary living arrangements before you go.”
“Harry’s coming back with us,” James says at once. “He’s our son and we’ve got a comfy couch and I’m good at transfiguration. Problem solved.”
Harry looks utterly thrilled by the offer for all of fifteen seconds before Padfoot ruins it.
“Not tonight!” Sirius interjects with a lascivious cackle. “Not when you two’ll be shagging all night as soon as you get home.”
Harry turns promptly green in the face. Malfoy sniggers too.
“You’ll both come home with me,” Sirius insists. He walks over and manouvers himself between the two teens, clapping a long arm over each of their shoulders. Harry looks significantly more comfortable with this arrangement than Malfoy does.
“Moony and I have a whole empty guest room and it’s got an entire real bed I can duplicate for the night. And then when Prongs and Lily have gotten all the crazy engagement sex out of their system, Haz, you can go live with them, and you, cuz, will stay with me and Moony and we’ll get drunk and bond over the trauma of the House of Black and plot to steal Reg back from the wankers, yeah?”
“Erm,” says Malfoy.
“Sounds perfect!” Harry chirps, beaming all the harder at Malfoy for pure spite.
Malfoy looks imploringly at Harry. “Who’s Moony?” he whispers.
“Professor Lupin,” Harry whispers back.
“Professor Lupin!” Sirius crows. “Oh, he’ll love that. Might even make up for the whole missing the Prongs-posal thing. A professor!” He starts shuffling them out the door, repeating “Professor Lupin!” with glee at regular intervals.
James wants to linger behind for a quiet moment with his fiancee, but Lily intertwines her pale fingers with his and pulls him towards the door instead. “Come on, let’s go make sure Sirius isn’t corrupting our son,” she says.
And just like that, they're a family of three.