Lily Potter and the Runaway Broomstick
A/N: Hey guys, turns out that Instagram is really good for inspiration. I was looking through all the head cannons for the marauders and dreamt up this oneshot. Hope you like it, ENJOY R&R PLZ!
Let's be clear, life with the Marauders was strange and Lily had learnt to live with it. Any given day the red-head could home to find her baby chasing a rat or riding a deer. They owned a cat but there was also a doggie dish and door in the kitchen. The simple fact that one Saturday she and Remus had to work together to get a drunken stag up the stairs and into the bed where she would sleep later right next to it proved that she could tolerate any level of strange. (By the way, stags DO snore so…yeah…picture that!) But when she came home from spending a ladies day with Mary and Alice to seeing the marauders running about the house, waving their hands in the air, calling for Harry, she knew that they now sat on the threshold of a whole new level of chaos.
The men stopped their running and waving to stare at her with fearful looks and Lily toed off her shoes before standing in front of them. "Okay what happened?"
"Well Lily…" Pettigrew began and Lily steeled herself for the worst. This is how she knew the marauders had really done something big. It was a like gauge, depending on how bad the situation they'd select the person that they'd feel would be best to break it to her. James was level one – minor pranks and mishaps that she would probably just roll her eyes at. Sirius was level two – bigger pranks, broken objects, and occasionally drunken incidents, things that would make her smack them once and scold them for a bit but they could rely on Sirius's humour to relieve some if not most of the tension. Remus was level three – this is when they really screwed up and knew she'd be mad. They counted on Remus's quiet manner to keep her from getting too mad and be able to talk her down. But Peter! Peter was their emergency, Lily-is-going-to-murder-us-please-don't-let-us-die, speaker. It worked too, it was impossible to shriek and rage at the little man with his watery eyes and helpless small voice.
Lily massaged her neck, "It's okay Pete, just tell me."
"We did what you said," Peter insisted. "We fed Harry and gave him a bath. He napped for a bit but he woke up but…" He trailed off timidly gnawing on his fingernails.
"But…" she could feel the annoyed ire rising prematurely and Peter shrank back at her tone.
Probably taking pity on Peter, Remus took over, "He seemed to want to fly because he kept going for his broom so we packed everything away just like you said we had to and we watched him carefully. However after a while," Remus gulped, "we got the idea of raising the broom a bit."
"Meaning?" Lily raised an eyebrow.
"Well he kept on brushing the sofa at three feet and nearly hit the table so we thought if the broom could go higher, he'd be able fly around more easily," Remus scratched the back of his neck. "But it didn't exactly go according to plan."
"What do you mean?" Lily growled, imagining her infant son in some perilous position about to break his neck.
"We were trying to make it four feet but ended up a little higher than that," Peter confessed.
"What? Five feet?" Lily asked, hoping against hope that that was the extent of this little adventure.
"More like six," Sirius answered. He held up his hand some distance above his head, "And a half," he added.
"Well where is he? Why didn't you just bring him down?!" Lily panicked. Somewhere above their heads she heard her son laugh but when she looked around, she couldn't see him.
"That's part two of the problem," all four backed away from the furious mother. James felt he should spare his friends from this one, "He sort of flew nearby the cloak stand and well I had that little trip earlier this morning so -"
"ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME MY BABY IS INVISIBLE?!" Lily nearly roared but it was frightening nonetheless. "James I swear to god I am locking that cloak away, this is fifth time Harry has gotten a hold it and disappeared but none of that matters right now because he is flying around above our heads with no safe way to get him down."
Just then they felt a small waft of air pass by and some sort of dust fell on them. "What is that?" James tried to bat it away.
"I don't know and I don't care, AFTER HIM!" Now all five of them were running around in circles on the first floor, trying to catch the runaway infant but the most any of them got was a brief touch of the cloak before it slipped away. Poor Peter was so short he tried standing on a chair only to be nearly knocked off as the baby zoomed by. Occasionally another dust cloud would fall but they didn't think anything of it until they stopped to catch their breath.
"This kid just does not get tired," Sirius panted.
"And I think I know why," Lily huffed and picked up something off the carpet. The men squirmed when they realised she was holding the remnants of a chocolate chip encrusted with crumbs. "Cookies," Lily chewed the inside of her cheek. "Who left the cookie jar open?"
"It was Remus!" Sirius pointed his finger at the wolf.
"Was not!" Remus denied outraged. "You and James were the ones scarfing them down!"
"OI! I had two! Sirius was -"
Lily glared at them, "James get a bed sheet."
"What for?"
"If Harry can fly into the cloak, he can fly into a sheet and we can bring him down gently. Then as soon as my baby is safe I am going to kill all of you!"
