Entry for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Season 5, Semi Finals - Wigtown Wanderers vs Pride of Portree
Position: Keeper
Prompt: A fluffy story using the prompt '"You've killed him/her!"' (dialogue)
Word Count: 1,750
Betas: silently-at-night, Aya Diefair
The Simple Happiness
Katie Bell smiled as she was woken from her light, blissful slumber by lips gently moving over her neck and strong arms pulling her into the muscular body lying behind her; a cocoon of body warmth formed around her and she sighed.
"I think she's still asleep," Marcus' voice, hoarse and rough from sleep, whispered into her ear, his hot breath tickling her skin, and she made a noise to show her agreement. Her smile widened when one of his big hands came to rest on her round belly, caressing it gently like he did every morning, as if to greet their baby.
"That means we could have enough time for some… shenanigans," he suggested, his smirk audible clearly to her, and Katie chuckled mischievously, turning around in his arms.
"You're reading my mind."
Marcus buried his fingers in her brown curls as she crossed the small distance between them with some shuffling, her arms wrapping around his neck. Their gazes were full of love when they just looked at each other for a moment, appreciating the fact that they were together and living such a happy life, then Katie tilted her head a little and claimed her husband's lips in a soft, yet demanding kiss.
'Trying not to mark your territory,' Marcus had once commented about this way of kissing him, when they'd been apart for some days or hadn't had the opportunity to be with each other – which had happened more frequently since the birth of their daughter Victoria three years ago. It was a kiss that was all in, one that could make his lips tingle in the aftermath, as if to remind him that only she had the privilege to kiss him like that.
Hell, he loved it when she did that.
The kiss grew with intensity and hands sneaked underneath clothes in a search for bare skin, light gasps escaped as sensitive spots were found with familiar ease, and breathless chuckles broke the silence of the morning in the small bedroom. Even after years of being together, of being married, they still felt a little like back when they'd only just had their first kisses, young love growing inside them.
Unfortunately, they didn't make it past the loving kisses, holding the promise of what they planned to follow, and teasing touches – Marcus' head, his thick dark hair mussed and disheveled from Katie running her fingers through it, shot up when he heard small feet on the wooden floors coming down the hallway.
"Oh damn, the whirlwind is awake," he murmured and they exchanged a regretful glance and a last kiss before the door to their bedroom was pushed open and a small body landed on the mattress. Scrambling up between them, displaying an astonishing amount of energy for this early time of day, Victoria grinned at her parents, her teddy bear clutched to her side.
"Hey sweetie, you're up already?" Katie asked softly and kissed her daughter once she'd settled between them.
"Daddy, you promised to play Quidditch with me."
"Yeah, Tori, I did, but not this early," Marcus replied, pushing a few strands of dark hair behind his daughter's ear. "It's not even seven am and Mummy and I were just cuddling with the baby…"
"You promised." Victoria gave him the puppy dog eyes while glancing at her mother's belly. "Can't you cuddle with the baby after Quidditch? It's not running away."
Marcus sighed after glancing at his wife and seeing her smile and nod softly, and pulled Victoria into his arms. "Okay, I promised. And you know I always keep my promises."
The little girl giggled when he lifted her onto his shoulder and she exclaimed: "You promised pancakes, too!"
"I did?" Marcus asked, mockingly puzzled, and Victoria laughed a little more, nodding frantically.
"You did, Daddy!"
"Hm, well, if I did… then we gotta make some, right?"
Katie watched their exchange with a warm, fuzzy feeling in her stomach and she couldn't stop smiling throughout taking a long, warm shower to soothe her back pain and getting dressed. When she came downstairs, Marcus and Victoria were in the kitchen of their little cottage, Marcus holding their daughter on his hip while controlling two pans on the stove with his wand and listening to Victoria's recount of the dream she'd had. She couldn't deny that these two were her favourite sight in the world, and once again she wished she could slow down time just a little bit, so these beautiful moments wouldn't go by too fast as their daughter seemed to grow up just a bit too quickly for their liking.
"We made pancakes for you and the baby, too, Mummy!" Victoria exclaimed when she noticed her mother standing in the doorway, and Katie walked over with a soft smile, running her hand down her husband's back while giving her daughter a kiss on the slightly disheveled hair.
"Well, thank you, you two. That's so sweet of you. But I hope you're not going to play Quidditch in your pyjamas," she said with a little smirk, glancing at their attire, and Marcus frowned.
"Why not? Technically, it's an uniform."
"Not everything that has 'Wigtown Wanderers' written on it is a uniform, Marcus," she teased while pulling her hand from the pocket of her cardigan and flicking it, making plates, mugs and cutlery fly from the cupboards and settle on the dining table in the middle of the room with soft noises.
"Okay, we'll get dressed after the pancakes. Your mummy always has to win, sweetie."
"Because I'm always right."
Katie and Marcus exchanged knowing smirks, then Marcus sent the two pans hovering over to the table and putting the pancakes on the plates before they returned to the stove and started producing more pancakes under Victoria's appreciative gaze. Surely this would be one of the first spells she wanted to learn at Hogwarts – right after the one that would make her room clean itself.
Breakfast with Victoria always was a noisy affair, filled with laughter and loud demands for more pancakes, and the little family enjoyed every moment of it.
OoO
A rough hour later, Katie settled into the hollywood swing hanging on the porch of their cottage with a tea and a book, watching her daughter hover over the grass with her toy broom, passing a children's Quaffle back and forth with her father. She was proudly wearing her Wigtown Wanderers robes, a special edition Marcus had let to be produced for her, and Katie knew she was pretending to be a member of the real team, like her parents.
"You practiced secretly!" Marcus exclaimed with a proud grin as he caught the small Quaffle, and Victoria chuckled.
"Of course. I wanna play the Little League!"
Some days, she wouldn't talk about anything else, even though she knew that she would have to wait another two years before she would be allowed to play in a team with other young witches and wizards.
"It's always good to have goals, sweetie. But you remember what we talked about, right? You're still too young. The kids in the Little League are all bigger than you."
Victoria rolled her eyes – an expression Marcus claimed she'd copied from Katie – and mumbled something under her breath that probably was an attempt to express her reluctant affirmation. A moment later, she was back to her smiling, bubbly self, though, and hovered closer to Marcus.
"Can you show me how to score a goal, Daddy?"
"Of course, Tori –"
"Are you sure you're the right one for that?" Katie asked loudly, chuckling under her breath as she threw her husband a challenging stare. "I mean, if I remember correctly, I scored more goals than you in my career."
"Well, I scored twice when it was most important," Marcus snarked back, relishing in seeing passion flicker in Katie's brown eyes for a moment, then Victoria tugging on his sleeve ripped them from the little bubble that had formed around them.
"Daddy!"
"Oh, yeah. Sure, sweetheart."
He turned towards the low goal rings he had built for her, the hoops sitting just at the right height for Victoria and her toy broom. "Okay, watch, Tori."
His muscles flexed and he threw the ball; Katie grimaced when she realised that Marcus hadn't remembered that the children's Quaffle was significantly lighter than the ball for adults he was used to. As expected, he threw it with way too much force, but Katie didn't have the time to pull out her wand and keep it from smashing the flower pot that Victoria had decorated once with painted flowers – she wasn't ready to drop her cookie for that. Victoria released a blood curdling scream when the Quaffle hit, but less because of the flower pot, but more because the Quaffle also hit her teddy bear, sitting propped up against the pot, square into the face.
"Teddy, no! You've killed him!"
Within seconds, Victoria had landed her toy broom and sprinted over to her teddy, closely followed by Marcus, who looked extraordinarily guilty considering that a teddy couldn't exactly die. Katie could see her daughter's similarities to her father clearly when the little girl knelt down in the grass and lifted her teddy into her arms, slowly and dramatically. The gesture worked as intended, though: the guilt on Marcus' face intensified and he knelt down as well, starting to inspect the fluffy brown stuffed animal for injuries with a worried hurry he usually only displayed when Victoria herself had gotten hurt while playing.
If he got close to fainting like he did when Katie went into labour for Victoria's birth, she would definitely get him a 'Father of the Year' award.
"No, sweetie, look, he's okay. Just a bit shaken, but teddy is a strong bear, right?"
Victoria double checked the fluffy limbs of her bear, then released a breath and smiled up at her father, raising a little finger. "You really gotta be more careful while playing, Daddy."
And with that she climbed onto her toy broom, teddy in her arm, and flew away while Marcus stared into space with a dumbfounded expression; Katie broke out into hysterical laughter and almost dropped her book as her body shook, her heart once again filling with a wonderful, fuzzy warmth that was the physical expression for how much she loved her little family.