A/N: For Abby Ebon, the Amazing.

Prologue

Harry was always a little tired after waking up from a long nap. He thought it was rather odd, to be tired for sleeping, but it was a pleasantly normal 'odd' for him – or it was, until a few hours turned into a few centuries.

Somehow, he just knew this was Hermione's fault.

Harry Potter was a quiet, hardly mentioned historical figure from the twentieth century – or so Jim discovered after an afternoon of intense research at the tiny town library. He'd gotten several odd looks for carting the heavy old tomes about, but he figured the librarians had to adjust to having a child prodigy present eventually. Then again, James Tiberius Kirk was prodigious even for a prodigy. He chalked that up to Frank, personally, not that he would ever say so.

Frank Durdson had been his stepfather from age six to age ten and it marked the most miserable four years of his life. His mother had been off-planet a lot and even though he knew she loved him and wouldn't have stood for the way Frank treated him or Sam when she was gone, Jim never spoke up. His mother loved space, anyone could see it on her face when she drove by the yards where the ships were being built, or when she rode in a shuttle; her eyes never left the stars. Jim refused to be the one who nailed her feet to the ground, even if Frank liked taking nails to him.

In the end, she discovered it all on her own.

A week before Jim's tenth birthday, his big brother Sam had run out and in a fit of despair and terrible understanding Jim stole Frank's prize car and drove it off a cliff. Jim almost followed the car down, but he never spoke of that.

Now, at twelve, Jim had had two years of quiet peace with his mother. When the police contacted her about the car incident, she'd come running home and straight into Frank taking every sharp-edged object at hand to Jim. Her temper was legend in their town now and Frank was quietly locked up in a prison in Colorado within the month. Afterwards, Winona had put her foot down, refusing to take any off-planet assignments until Jim was of age. So the two of them made the best of things, and six months in Sam had shown up for a visit and they were a family again, for a little while.

Otherwise, those two years were serene as Winona could make them. Jim, free to put his all into school once more, was quickly identified as a prodigy and his mother did everything she could to make sure he was happy and challenged, even letting him help her with some of the coding for the big ship being built in the yards – the Enterprise. Sam didn't visit again, but he called when he was accepted to a California university and when he started dating a girl he called 'the One'. Jim moved up two grades in a week and still felt older than his classmates most days; he was happy but he never became close to any of his peers and he blamed the forced maturity from Frank's time for that.

Everything went surprisingly smoothly, until one day, Jim made a friend.