Chapter 99: 3-1

It was a night when the moon had completely risen.

"Good evening, Harry."

On a bridge where a single misstep would send one plunging into the abyss, that person stood nonchalantly, bathed in the moonlight. Untidy black hair and hazel eyes—James Potter. It had all started when Draco handed me a letter from him, saying he had received it from an owl. Inside was a designated location and a simple summons. Draco had hesitated, but he didn't stop me as I put on my Invisibility Cloak.

"Didn't you bring Draco Malfoy along?"

"……Why?"

Folded parchment swayed, pinched between James's fingers. The Marauder's Map. I see; the Marauder's Map could see through both an Invisibility Cloak and the disguise of a Polyjuice Potion. But, however—that was only if they were recognized by the map.

When I went back in time with Hermione using the Time-Turner, the future Maria and Hermione didn't appear on the map. In that case—am I truly existing here as 'myself' after all?

"Hmm, so you do know about this after all. Potter and Malfoy... I thought it was some kind of joke, but—"

James beckoned me with just a flick of his finger. I hesitated. I was scared. From a father—I was given violence, not love.

I don't know my father. But—I have met you, dead, twice. When facing Voldemort, you smiled, telling me you were proud of me—promising to stay by my side until the very end. When I chased my son with the Time-Turner, you were gently cradling me as a baby. —I only knew you as a 'father'.

And now, standing before me was the schoolboy bully James Potter from Professor Snape's memories. Not my father. Just as Lily Evans, unaware of her future motherhood, had harshly rejected the child of James Potter and Lily Evans as something horrific—to this James Potter, my existence was nothing more than an eerie something.

"Come here, Harry. It's alright."

My father is calling me.

"Harry."

James is calling me.

"Harry—come to your father."

I dashed forward. James caught me. Ruffling my hair—which was already untidy, inherited from my father—even further, he wrapped his arms tightly around my back and stroked the back of my neck.

"Episkey."

As I instantly tensed up, my father smiled with a softened expression.

"...Just kidding. Only in spirit. I didn't mean to squeeze you hard enough to cause injury. —Though I suppose the heart doesn't heal quite as easily."

Pat, pat. He patted my back as if comforting a child. My father's chest felt warm and comforting. —His heart was beating. He was alive.

"—Why?"

"Well, who knows why. There are clumsy deductions like the circumstances, Evans's reaction... or the look on your face back then—but I just had a feeling."

I was held in his arms. We were the same age, the same height, with the only difference being that his nose was a little more prominent—and yet, I couldn't break free from the arms enveloping me. No matter what, this person—was my father.

"Will you tell me about your father?"

Still held by him, I sat on the bridge's railing—where leaning back just a little would plunge us both into the valley. The moon looked even brighter now.

"...I don't know them. Neither my father nor my mother. I know who they are, but—we couldn't spend any time together at all."

"...I see."

James nodded quietly.

"But many people told me about them. Hagrid, Professor McGonagall, my godfather, my father's best friend—and my mother's sister. Everyone said my parents were brave. They said that even though my father took mischief a bit too far sometimes—he was popular and loved by everyone."

"Well, well."

"—But,"

I remembered him. Not the boy from earlier. The man in pitch-black robes, with dark, painful eyes, like an overgrown bat who had missed his time to die—the one who was kept alive by love and consumed by love.

"'You are just like your father, not only in appearance but in nature too,' he said. 'Arrogant, playing the hero, just like your father.' —He was the only one who rejected me."

You are no hero—just an arrogant child.

"James Potter. Can you be proud of your actions—to your future child? If your own child found out about it—don't you think they would be disappointed? Seeing the cruel side of the parents who were supposed to be their emotional anchor, the father who had always been a hero—"

"What did you think?"

"...I despised it. It was awful. I was disillusioned. I always thought my father was amazing because everyone said so. But—he wasn't. He... he did such cowardly things without a second thought!"

I clung to him. If I didn't say it now, it would never reach him. My father—is dead.

"Tormenting people for fun! Just like Dudley, who enjoyed bullying me! Hurting people as if it were a game! Do you really even like my mother? I don't even know that anymore. I didn't want to see that!"

I beat against his chest. James stroked my back with a gentleness that felt entirely out of place.

"—And? What does the Harry of now think of his father and mother?"

My throat trembled, and it felt as though I had forgotten how to breathe.

"—I love them. No matter what kind of people they were—they are my parents. Even if I'm just putting you on a pedestal and idolizing an ideal—I want to be proud of you, who were proud of me, and who risked your lives to protect me. So..."

"—To be completely honest with you,"

While keeping his hand continuously on my back, James pressed his forehead against mine and grinned, almost petulantly. It was a childish smile.

"I'm only fourteen right now, you know. It's fun messing around with my friends, and I can't imagine myself as an adult at all. Having kids is completely out of the question. What kind of job I'll have or what kind of life I'll lead—it's nothing more than a fantasy more uncertain than a dream."

"……Yes."

"You're fourteen too, right? Can you think about your future children right now?"

I know them. James. Albus. Lily. My beloved children. —Because on the inside, I am not fourteen.

But when I was truly a child, I had my hands full just taking care of myself; such a thought wouldn't have even crossed my mind. It was only when I was told that Ginny had a baby in her belly that I realized for the first time I was going to be a father.

This person—is a child.

"……No."

I looked down. It was wrong to blame a child-aged father. But. Even so. If that's the case—what should I do with my young self's heart, which was treated so harshly by that man because he saw the man he hated in me? To whom else besides you—the root cause and my father—should I direct this resentment?

"—But,"

With a rustle, my bangs were brushed up. The lightning-bolt scar was exposed to my father's eyes.

"That's only if I didn't know. Now that the possibility of having my own child... well, when it's thrust right in front of me like this—yeah, maybe your father regrets it just a little bit?"

I couldn't help but burst out laughing. A teaser, competitive, a show-off—he was exactly the kind of person I thought he'd be.

"Will you tell me more? ...Keep the grievances to a moderate level, though."

"Yes, the story of my father—I want you to listen to it, James."

Under the clear moonlight—I talked deep into the night with my child-aged father, just like a child myself.

"James Sirius Potter, huh."

He thought of the guest who looked exactly like him, who had vanished beneath the Invisibility Cloak—a family heirloom never to leave their possession.

He remained completely in the dark about the path the boy had walked. Why his parents couldn't be with him. Why his appearance didn't match his actual age. And above all, why he was in this era. He hadn't spoken of those things. (Though, to be fair, Harry himself didn't understand the latter half either.)

But—that curse mark on his forehead. And the increasingly unsettling state of the world. —The answers revealed themselves naturally.

An unprecedented fondness overflowed in James's chest. Surely, from now on—he would come to direct these feelings toward her as well.

Predicting that his best friend had followed him anyway, he muttered with a smile toward him.

"They say Harry has three kids."

"……Meaning, yours?"

"I suppose that's how it goes. You never know what will happen in this world."

As expected, the handsome boy with sleek, ink-black hair had been monitoring the secret meeting between James Potter and the other Potter. His wand had been trained on Harry the entire time. —Whether the day would come for it to be aimed at him again, he did not know.

"—Sirius. You know what I'm trying to say, right?"

"Yeah."

Brushing back his black hair, each strand shining like silk in the moonlight, Sirius Black smirked provocatively. It was a face that anyone would find wildly handsome and thrilling. Being good-looking sure gives you an advantage, James secretly envied.

"Even so... naming the eldest son James Sirius is brilliant, but what's with the second son? Why on earth did it turn out like that?"

"Albus Severus—apparently they're both named after great mentors?"

"Mentors? What the hell was the future me thinking... well, hmm. I can pretty much guess, though."

His refined face wasn't ruined by his rough mannerisms—not at all; the handsome boy who had girls screaming from top to bottom let out a sigh.

James Potter narrowed his charming, upturned eyes. Like the moon, his eyes cast a mysterious glow.

"—We'll have to silence Snivellus."

After all, it is only natural justice for a parent to protect their child.