beach trip (no peas or pants required)
a/n: prompts are at the bottom. also please note that this is a forum fic, so if you're not familiar with the forums involved, you will think me insane.
Les and Barty needed a break. A change of scenery, if you will. So they decided it might be a good idea to pack up their three children and take a trip to the beach.
Barty called the children into the living room and told them to pack their bags, and while he helped them, Les contacted some of her dementor friends, asking if they knew of any good beaches. One of the dementors offered a place that was about a day's drive from Les' house, and when she looked into it, she quickly found a hotel with glittering reviews.
She talked to her husband about it, and they decided to leave early the next morning.
What Les and Barty were thinking was that there wasn't much that could go wrong on the beach. What they should have been thinking was that there was plenty that could go wrong on the drive there.
-x-
While Les loaded everyone's bags into the car, Barty was in charge of figuring out seating arrangements. He would sit in the passenger seat while his wife drove, obviously, but there were so many possible arrangements for the couple's three children.
Sev and Gel's car seats would require more space, but at the same time, it wasn't really fair to shove Modesty in the middle when both parents knew she would probably just sit there quietly the entire time. She didn't need to be seated where both Les and Barty could see her.
Sev might try to get into a few things during the beginning of the trip, but Barty knew he would soon enough learn to entertain himself. As for Gel, well, it was clear he needed much more supervision than his brother and sister combined.
So he put Sev behind Les, Modesty behind himself, and buckled Gel in between them and charmed his safety restraints so he couldn't take them off. Not only would this stop him from getting away, it would also prevent Les being distracted by a pair of flying pants and slamming into a guide rail.
Les took the driver's seat and buckled her seatbelt, starting the car and pulling out of the driveway. They were off.
-x-
The beginning of the trip passed quietly enough. The children entertained themselves in the backseat, and Les drove onto the highway. Once her muggle navigation system had informed her of where to go next, she addressed everyone in the car as she spoke.
"If anyone gets hungry, there are snacks in the car. Don't fill up on those, because we are only stopping once for lunch and once for dinner, and you don't get a separate meal because you ate too many cheesy crackers. If you have to use the bathroom, tell me when you notice it, not when you're at serious risk of having an accident. And most importantly, don't ask me if we're there yet. I told you this was an all-day drive, and you knew that when you were packing up your things to do."
Everyone agreed at once. That period of calm lasted for about...thirty-four minutes.
"Mummy, I'm hungwy!" Severus complained just as Les turned onto the interstate.
"Sev, you just had breakfast," his mother reminded him.
"But I's hungwy again!"
Les sighed. "Fine then. Modesty, could you give your brother a bag of crackers?"
She did so.
While Severus nibbled his crackers, Modesty opened a notebook and took note of all the license plates driving alongside them, and Gel was...trying to take off his pants. Luckily, with the way Barty had charmed his car seat, by the time he got them off, it would be time for lunch.
Another hour passed. Sev asked for crackers again, and Les knew she would have trouble getting him to eat anything later. Modesty looked up at the license plate of the car nearest them, then scribbled something down in her notebook, and Gel was beginning to look a little squirmy.
"Do you have to go potty, Gel?" Les attempted.
Gellert stopped squirming immediately, his eyes a little wide. "No!"
"Does anyone else need to stop?"
"I wouldn't mind stopping," Modesty said. "If that's okay with you, that is."
As Barty reminded his daughter once again that it was entirely okay to voice that she needed something, Les began looking for places to stop.
-x-
As soon as they arrived at the gas station, the couple split up. Barty accompanied Sev to the bathroom and promised to wait for Modesty, and Les tried to keep Gel from taking his pants off.
"Are you sure you don't want to try going potty?" Les asked him.
"No," Gellert told his mother, looking at her like she'd suggested feeding him peas.
"You know if you do, you'll get to take your pants off."
The toddler's eyes lit up at the idea of losing his pants, but still he insisted he didn't have to go. Maybe he truly didn't.
Les relented as she took her son by the hand and led him over to see if his siblings had finished. They had, so the family walked back to the car.
Of course, as soon as everyone was strapped back in and Les was about to start the car, Modesty got her attention. "Mummy, I think Gellert might have had an accident," she said.
"Gellert, didn't I ask you if you had to go?"
"I didn't hafta go then!"
Sighing, Les hauled herself and her son back out of the car and back into the gas station so she could change him. It figured, Gellert had gotten to lose his pants for a few moments anyway, and that was all he'd wanted.
-x-
It wasn't long until midafternoon came and the family became hungry. To save some time, Les drove through the nearest MagiDonald's, lowering her window as she asked what everyone wanted.
"Pizza!" Gellert shouted.
"Gel, MagiDonald's doesn't serve pizza."
Gel thought for a moment. "I dunno, then."
Modesty had no preference as long as it wasn't peas (not that MagiDonald's served peas, but Modesty seemed to think they would appear at any given time,) Sev just wanted a small serving of fries, and Barty and Les ordered as usual.
"Are you sure you just want fries?" Barty asked his son.
Sev nodded, then shoved another cracker in his mouth. Of course.
When their food was given to them, Les handed back Modesty's pea-free order, Gel's pizza substitute, and Sev's fries. The middle child of the family didn't even put his crackers aside to eat them, he alternated between crackers and fries.
Les returned to the highway.
-x-
By evening, Les and Barty were both exhausted. Sev was chomping his way through what had to be his eighth bag of crackers (as a comparison, each of his siblings had only had one apiece.) Gellert had made everyone else in the car very aware that he didn't like pants, want to wear any, or even want them to exist. And while Modesty told her brother that she felt the same way about peas, peas still existed, and she would have to live with it, Gel just said that while Modesty's dislike of peas was respected, he still had to wear pants.
Shortly before dinnertime, Les pulled over at a rest stop and offered a chance to use the bathroom and stretch their legs to anyone who wanted it. At first, Gellert declined in favor of running around the parking lot and nearly being run over by a mom van, but when Les grabbed him, he suddenly decided that he did want to use the bathroom after all.
Once everyone finished up in the bathroom (and Les had made absolute sure Gel knew she wanted him to do that again,) she and Barty suggested everyone get something to drink from the vending machine. This was, of course, on the condition that the children stuck to water or juice, because anything else would have them running around the restaurant at dinner and trying to squirm out of their seats the rest of the trip.
Sev complained, but immediately stopped when Modesty told him, "At least Mummy and Daddy aren't making you drink pea milk."
He seemed genuinely happy about his apple juice after that.
-x-
After so many hours of sitting in the car, Barty and Les universally decided that dinner would be a sit-down affair in a real restaurant. Les pulled into the parking lot of a place where she had double-checked that the servers wouldn't make an attempt to clog the children with peas, as they, like MagiDonald's, did not serve peas.
There was surprisingly little running around. While Barty did get Gellert a high chair so he would have as much trouble as possible taking off his pants, there wasn't much need for it in terms of preventing Gellert from running through the restaurant. Overall, it served as a nice period of quiet before the last segment of their drive.
Once Barty paid the bill and began gathering up the children, Les told them, "According to my calculations, we'll be at our hotel in a little over an hour and a half."
-x-
Barty and Les were expecting this last part of the drive to be a mess, with the children beginning to get tired and bored and even more dissatisfied with pants than usual. Instead, how the family spent the final ninety-four minutes of their drive surprised them both.
It wasn't long before Gellert fell asleep, and while Severus didn't seem interested in following suit, he did at least recognize that he had eaten more crackers since morning than he had had in the past year, and stopped. Modesty began to gather up some of the things that she and her brothers had scattered all over the car. And by the time Les found a parking space in the hotel parking lot, there hadn't been a complaint in hours.
(That's not to say, of course, that once they had checked in, Gellert didn't ask to go to the pool for the sole reason of wanting to avoid pants, and when their parents were distracted, Modesty didn't secretly join Severus in pressing all the elevator buttons. But it wasn't a big deal, as Les and Barty both knew exactly how their children would behave in a hotel.)
All of the children were bathed, changed into their pajamas, and in bed by the time Barty finished dragging all the luggage into the hotel room. Not that it truly mattered. As soon as they woke up in the morning, the first thing they would do was head straight for the beach.
-x-
It was midmorning when Barty, Les, and their children, all clad in their swimming garments, left their hotel and took the short walk to the beach. Gellert had insisted upon wearing only a swim diaper, and Les had decided that the beach really was the best occasion not to wear pants. (She did, however, remind him that he still had to at least try to use the toilet on this vacation.)
Sev, Gel, and Modesty all scattered once their parents set out the beach towels and umbrella. However, Les and Barty took a moment together to look out at the gentle waves, lapping at the ankles of the shrieking Severus.
"It's beautiful, isn't it," Barty said as he allowed his wife to rest her head on his shoulder.
"Better than I expected," Les said. "I'm so glad we came here."
But then, as half-expected, she stood upright and pronounced, "Severus Snape, don't throw sand at your sister!"
Maybe their family would never be able to have a truly peaceful vacation. It wasn't even possible with two toddlers running around. But Les and Barty hoped that at the very least, they could manage a weeklong trip without being banned from an entire chain of hotels.
i didn't even mean to write this it just happened.
for c/p - c/p sells seashells by the seashore event (write a fic set on the shore/at the beach)
for morsmordre - barbecued muggle kabobs event (use the prompt, "you can go forth unburdened by peas.")
for hogwarts - first aid task one (write about taking a break)