They were interrupted when they heard a noise. A man’s voice and a boy’s laughter came slipping through a door on their right. James and Lily turned and looked at each other, then as fast as they could, moved towards the sound. They soon found that the voices had come from the hallway. But what caught the attention wasn’t the hallway it was the two people inside. The man looked almost exactly like James. Only a few traits were different. He was older, and his eyes were green, not brown, but the difference that caught their attention was a lightning shaped scar on his forehead.
“What have the two of you been doing?” James and Lily startled at the sound of the woman’s voice coming from behind them. “Seriously Harry, please tell me that you weren’t out teaching him to fly.”
“Well, I will just have to be quiet then,” Harry, answered with a grin, giving the boy beside him a furtive look. The boy beamed at Harry, apparently thinking the world of his father. Lily took a closer look at him. He looked a lot like Harry and maybe even more like James. His hair was jet black like theirs, but not as untidy. Actually, although quite windswept from the flight, his hair was largely in order, and rather shiny at that. The thing that made him look more like James than Harry however was his eyes. Rather than having hers and Harry’s green eyes, he had James’, or rather his mother’s, big brown ones.
“Harry you are impossible! Am I the only person in this house that is thinking about getting ready for Julie’s birthday party? Look at yourselves, you’re a complete mess.”
“Mum, cool down. We’re men, so we don’t take forever to get ready like you girls,” the boy interrupted her in a very matter-of-factly manner. Harry quickly pretended to cough to hide his laughter; then placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Sirius, why don’t you head upstairs, take a shower and get ready before you get us into even more trouble,” he then said with a smile. James lit up in a smile when he heard the boy’s name, shooting off a happy glance to Lily. He then followed the boy with his eyes as he walked passed them out into the room with the staircase and up the stairs.
The woman didn’t speak until Sirius was out of sight, then she turned back to Harry, looking very disappointed.
“Ginny, please don’t look at me like that. You know he have to practice if he want to try out for the Quidditch team this year. You do want him to make the team don’t you?” Harry said with a gentle smile on his face.
“Of course I do, Harry. But did you have to practice with him today, on Julie’s birthday, when you supposed to be getting ready? What if something would have happened and we didn’t get there in time?”
“Do you really think that I would have risked little Julie’s birthday. There is still plenty of time to get ready, and I wasn’t letting him take any risks.”
“But still, Harry,” she said in a soft voice, with a rather hurt expression on her face.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are when you look hurt like that?” Harry asked as he moved in closer slipping his arms around her waist.
“Harry you’re sweaty and filthy. You’ll make me have to change again.” Ginny said quietly, but her voice and the way she let him embrace her demonstrated clearly that she didn’t mind what he was doing at all. Slowly Harry leaned in and kissed his wife pulling her closer, definitely making it necessary for her to change her clothes again.
“You know, there is still a lot of time before we have to be off…” Harry whispered softly into her ear as he kissed her neck. Ginny didn’t answer him but moved her body closer as Harry lifted her up and headed for the stairs. James grinned when Lily pulled him away from the couple. He was just about to say something when he was interrupted.
“MUM, WHERE ARE MY BLUE ROBES? I CAN’T FIND THEM! Harry groaned as he let his wife go.
“Please tell me that you know where they are so you won’t have to go and look,” he then said in a very annoyed voice.
“Sorry,” she said with a faint smile as she shook her head.
“MUM, YOU HAVE TO COME!”
“Tell me again, why we have four?”
“Because you can’t stop hauling me off to the bedroom,” she said with a playful smile giving him a kiss before turning and heading upstairs. Harry followed her up, still holding her hand.
“You might want to remind me how on earth we ever had the time,” he sighed.
“Grandparents!” Ginny answered him.
“Ah, there you have a very good invention; you don’t think we can make them stay there tonight, do you?”
“I am sure they will be very happy about it. Now however, you need to go and take a shower.”
“A very cold one at that,” Harry said giving his wife a final kiss before heading off towards what James and Lily thought must be the bathroom.
Slowly they headed back downstairs, thinking about what they had just seen. To them their son was still a little boy of one. As far as they could remember, they had been watching him lying in his crib just an hour ago. Yet here was this man, older than they were, with a wife and four children of his own.
“He seems to be happy.” Lily was the first to speak, looking attentively at her husband. James looked back and smiled at her.
“Well, at least there is nothing wrong with his marriage,” he then answered with a grin.
“James! That is our son you are talking about,” Lily said with pretended indignation. She could however not refrain from smiling, since she in fact had been thinking the same thing.
Once down the staircase, they headed in to the room they had been in earlier when the kids had argued over the diary. They studied it closer this time. It was a very comfortable room. A big sofa was placed along one of the walls, and armchairs that looked quite comfortable were cornering it on the sides. There were several bookcases along the walls, a coffee table in front of the sofa and a rocking chair in one of the corners next to a small table with a plant on it. The thing that caught their eye the most however was the huge fireplace in the far corner of the room. The fireplace was beautiful in itself, but a beautiful carved mantelpiece carrying many framed pictures amplified the impression. They went closer and studied the photos for a while, recognising Harry, his wife and the three children they had seen so far. There were also other people in the pictures, many redheads that they presumed were Ginny’s family but also people with brown, blond and even silver coloured hair.
Suddenly James spotted something among the photos. He leaned over and saw two pictures picturing himself.
“Look Evans, he’s got our wedding-picture up here! And look there’s the one you took of me and Sirius holding Harry at his christening. How on earth…Sirius must have given him that.” Lily smiled and leaned in to have a closer look. It was a very good photo. James and Sirius were standing next to each other, smiling. Sirius was holding a kicking Harry and James had his arm around his shoulders, waving with his free hand.
They turned around as they heard noises coming from the stairs in the adjacent room, and watched as Sirius came walking in, making good on his word of not taking to long to get ready. His hair was still damp, but in impeccable order, and he looked very nice in his navy blue robes. He headed over to one of the armchairs and sat down to wait for the others.
He didn’t have to wait long. The younger boy, the one named Christopher, joined him shortly. He was wearing blue robes and James and Lily smiled as they realised that he must have been the one that interrupted his parents earlier when he couldn’t find them. Harry and his wife entered shortly thereafter; Harry in emerald green robes that matched his eyes perfectly and Ginny in light turquoise ones, having changed out of the yellow robes she had on before. Harry looked around the room.
“Where are the girls?” he asked. Sirius shrugged his shoulders as if it was only expected of girls to take too long time on getting ready, causing his mother to give him a reproachful look. Harry however went out into the next room and shouted up the stairs that it was time to leave. They heard two girls yelling back that they were coming, and then movements from upstairs as Harry came back into the living room checking that they had everything.
Lily was the first to enter the room, dressed in very light green robes. James and Lily now waited eagerly to she Harry’s final child, but to their surprise, the girl that entered looked nothing like Harry or his wife. In fact, she looked nothing like anyone in the family.
She was quite pretty, with pale skin, long, shiny white-blond hair and big blue eyes with very long eyelashes. She was fairly tall and slim, and the very light blue robes she wore matched her eye-colour almost as perfectly Harry’s green ones did his.