AN: You know the Potter kids would be the sweetest things ever, with Harry as their dad and the Weasley family all around...
I just imagined this cute little friendship between Lily and Kreacher, home together while Ginny and Harry work and the boys are at school, and this fell into place. Turned out long-ish, but I think it's worth the time.
Enjoy the feels!
The tureen shattered on the ground, turquoise shards flying across the kitchen floor. The old house-elf winced belatedly, and didn't recover from the great sound until long after the final pieces had stopped wobbling forlornly on the linoleum.
Kreacher was old- how old, he knew not, because the day of his birth had been just the same as any other day of his life for all of his life. House-elves didn't have birthdays, nor holidays or festivals; their culture was one of servitude in the absolute degree, with Christmas and Easter defined only by the extra dishes demanded by the masters: fruitcake and Christmas pudding, lamb with mint jelly.
Kreacher had extra duties in house with three children, on these days ("hide these eggs around the house", "frost these cupcakes with big 'A's for 'Albus' "), but from them Kreacher only derived the daily, mundane joy of being servile. Any task the master asked of was supposed to be equally gratifying; joy unordered was simply not a part of the equation of his life.
Nor was uncommanded fear- but that didn't stop him from feeling it.
He trembled from the tips of his huge ears, now, because of this small rebellion. He didn't know where these unbidden feelings had come from, and he knew they were perfectly unnecessary; Master hadn't demanded them, after all. But even when doing Mistress Ginny's bidding with his stiffening little body, his mind raced with unbidden fear- and incidents like this only brought the feelings crushing down on him once more. He was growing old and slower; everything was more difficult than it had been, and though he could never complain, he knew what he felt in his creaking joints and aching feet.
Every time he walked down the hallway, he remembered what he had been born to, and that he had known his entire life that his head would one day grace the Black family wall- but on this side, so much closer to death, the reality seemed much more menacing.
And so every time he spilled soup or dropped a glass, Kreacher tasted a fear he could not express aloud until he was safely closeted in his boiler-room nest at night. Then, and only then, he was free to shed tears- but quietly, so as not to disturb the sleep of Master and his family.
Kreacher slowly cleaned up the spilled gravy, washed the rag he had used and the dish, returning both to their proper places. He would have to make more gravy, then- and the treacle tart would need to cool, the jacket potatoes would soon be done cooking-
"Kreacher!" a bright little voice called.
He turned just as a small girl, sunshine spangling across her bright red hair, leapt into view from behind the kitchen door. Even with her front teeth still growing in, the smile on her petite, freckled face positively lit up the dim kitchen.
"Would you like to come to my tea party?" she asked breathlessly.
"Oh, Miss Lily…" Kreacher began, glancing over at the stove. "Kreacher has more work to do for Mistress Ginny-"
"I asked you if you wanted to come." Lily piped back, tilting her head.
Kreacher was torn; as a family member to Harry, Lily could command him to do whatever she liked- but as a servant, it was also his duty to anticipate the requests of the family. What he wanted to do hardly mattered.
"Well… If you wish, Miss Lily, I suppose I could-"
"Mummy won't mind," Lily reassured him, before pelting back down the hall. "It's in the broom room!"
This parlor had been Mistress Black's favorite when she lived, though it was a small space. Between Harry, Ginny, and their Quidditch-loving children, though, the room had become little more than a storage room: three Nimbus 2000's, Ginny's Firebolt from her Holyhead Harpy days, broken toy brooms Albus and James used to crash into each other, and Snitches still fluttering weakly in the corners like sad flies, their wings crimped from being caught. Lily had cleared a space in the center of the room and prepared a spread on a Chudley Cannons blanket. Zeus, James' owl, and Harold, Albus' grey ferret, were waiting patiently in front of toy plastic tea cups on Tinker-Toy saucers. Zeus was wrapped in a rainbow scarf clearly knit by Molly Weasley, and Harold appeared slightly miffed to have been stuffed into a doll's jumper.
Lily leapt over the tea set in her socked feet, taking her place at the head of this strange picnic- and she patted the ground happily for Kreacher to be seated as well, which the old elf did painfully.
"Welcome, everybody!" Lily declared, looking to each of her guests in turn. Kreacher had been to quite a few of these tea parties before, and knew his role: his job was to magically fill the tiny cups, float the sugar bowl, and evaporate the eventual spills, to Lily's ecstatic delight.
"Miss Lily made this tea herself," Kreacher noted under his breath, at which the girl beamed and nodded happily. Why hadn't she asked him to do it? Could even the youngest Potter child sense that Kreacher was failing in his duties more and more?...
"Yep! It wasn't fair for you to have to do the serving AND bring the tea," Lily asserted, crossing her purple tight-covered legs. "One day when I'm old enough to go to Hogwarts, I'll do the magicking myself and serve YOU, Kreacher!"
"There's no need, Miss Lily… Kreacher is a servant, it's what he does…"
"Oh, posh!" Lily could not have looked more like a small Ginny, sweeping away Kreacher's words as though it were a hovering Nargle; the heavy dust in the air, visible in the small, high stained-glass window's beam, scattered with the movement .
"Kreacher, you never think about yourself, and it's starting to worry me," Lily lectured, lowering her eyebrows and staring the elf straight in the face. "Mummy and Daddy have tried getting you to go on vacation and you wouldn't do it- and remember when you dropped the pot rack on yourself, because you were having a tantrum about the account at Gringotts they got you?"
"A house-elf is never paid!" he responded indignantly; this wound was still fresh. "Kreacher is no common mule, taking from my Masters-!"
"Krea-cher," Lily sighed dramatically, rolling her bright brown eyes. "Remember, you agreed that that money was for if you ever got sick or needed something? What if you wanted to go visit Winky, and go out for butterbeers? What would we do if you got tired of working for us one day? James would lock Albus in the washer, and Grandma Weasley would have to come by Floo Powder to make dinner since Mummy's useless … You need to take breaks sometimes, so you don't get sick of us and leave."
"I wouldn't," the house-elf said with finality, crossing his papery arms. "A house-elf never leaves the house unless they is commanded to, or when they dies-"
Lily had been about to interrupt Kreacher, but at the mention of death, her small eyes had widened. It'd surprised Kreacher too- never had he spoken aloud of his greatest fear.
Clamping his grizzled mouth shut, Kreacher wilted as though awaiting punishment, wrapping his arms around his legs and bowing his head.
"You're… You're going to die someday, Kreacher?"
It was the 'someday' that made him look up. From the shocked expression on her small face, it seemed as though Lily Potter had never considered a world without Kreacher in it. Kreacher gazed into this expression morosely, nodding his bat-eared head in confirmation.
"That much is certain," he breathed, more to himself than to her.
"Oh. I didn't know house-elves died," the girl said simply. Harold squirmed in place at her side, chafing at his doll sweater. Growing uncomfortable himself, Kreacher lifted the ferret's cup into the air and drew shining tea in a great swirl from the purple tea pot's spout.
"Now, now, Miss Lily, there's no need to concern yourself with such things… Here, Mister Zeus, have you a cuppa..."
There was more unease in Lily's eyes than usual as she watched Kreacher levitate the tea into figure-of-eights with his pointed finger; usually she would be squealing with delight by now. Instead, the little red-headed child looked from Zeus to Harold, biting her lower lip in thought- and then suddenly, she burst onto her feet, rushing past Kreacher as he focused on landing the tea into everyone's cups.
"Kreacher, I almost forgot- you need something to wear to the tea party, too!"
And with that, she snatched a Holyhead Harpies baseball cap off of the shelf behind him, and plopped it straight on top of Kreacher's bald head.
To his credit, Kreacher did manage to get all the tea into receptacles before the reality of the situation became fully clear to him. Almost too quickly to note, there was a fluttering feeling in his chest, as though a large, invisible bird had side-swept him with its wing as it made a break for the high window- and then he screamed, tore at the sensation and screamed, the room tilting crazily.
"NOOOOO! NOOO, NOOOOO!" He rose up and fell, unsteady on his feet, all energies focused on the emptiness left in the wake of that terrible swooping sensation. Dimly, he knew he was being too loud- but the air seemed to tear from his small lungs in horrible howls of grief. Throwing himself prostrate, he was aware that he had kicked over the tea set.
"NOOOOOOO!"
"Kreacher! Kreacher, what's the matter?" Lily was crying, stooping down to take the elf by the elbow. "I can get you a new hat, if you don't like that one!"
"NOO, Noo- No, no, no... Miss Lily- Miss Lily-" His words were ragged, disjointed.
"Clothes… shame of the… clothes. Why. No, no, no…"
"Kreacher!" she called more urgently, shaking him by the arm. Tears of fear were welling up in her eyes, now. Even Harold and Zeus were looking concerned.
"Kreacher, stop, please! I'll go get Daddy, just hold on-"
"NO!" he shouted, more vehemently than even before- but seeing his effect on the child seemed to calm Kreacher down a modicrum. "I mean, please- no, please don't, Miss Lily… Kreacher… Kreacher is alright…B-but why did you do that!?"
"Do what?"
"C-clothes…" was all he could muster; panic was washing over him again. He must calm down, he mustn't scream- maybe, if nobody else had heard or seen-
"What about them?" she asked concernedly. Her small hand was still warm on his elbow.
"Cl- house-elves… Kreacher has failed in his duties!" But even as he said this, no will to harm himself arose, no compulsion beyond his control. He lay on the ground, Lily and Harold and Zeus all hovering over him as he climbed into a sitting position.
"… Oh!" Lily suddenly cried, making the animals around her jump. "I totally forgot! Daddy said something about not giving you clothes… that's why we have to leave the laundry downstairs instead of giving it to you… Oh, Kreacher, I'm sorry! What does it mean?"
"I- I am no longer bound to this house…" he found himself murmuring. It was as though he had to excise this horrible thought before he could begin to believe it. He, a seventeenth-generation house-elf, set free on accident… What did this mean? Where would he go, turned out and so old and frail? Would they cast him out on sight for his failure, or demand his death? Could he kill himself instead, whisk Lily out of the room and do it before Harry and Ginny found them-
"… So?"
So? SO? Kreacher was prepared to shout at her, to school her young self on exactly what the honor of his race meant, how much of his identity this role was, and the shame that couldn't be known by someone like her, a wand-carrier-
But the look on her freckled face stopped him. She was smiling.
"You've never been bound here, silly. If you had ever wanted to leave, Daddy and Mummy would have let you… You can always stay here if you want, Kreacher. You ARE family, after all!"
The tide of panic shifted, going back out into the black sea of unknowing. Family? He was just a servant- someone bound by magic to people he could really choose to dislike, if he wanted- and he certainly had disliked Harry and Ginny, their messy half-blood children, before it had stopped mattering... This family, the one Sirius had willed him to, didn't seem to care about blood status the way the Blacks had… When had Kreacher stopped noticing that Lilly was a half-blood, anyway, and let her hand rest on his elbow for comfort? When had her innocent smiles and silly ideas stopped revolting him?
How long had he secretly wanted to come to her tea parties, just to hear those delighted laughs?
And would Harry- Master Harry, he reminded himself- have let him leave if he had done something so strange as to want to? The locket of Regulus Black, polished to a shimmer each night before Kreacher slept, had been a gift to him- something not required by the master of a house-elf, or even to be expected. He still remembered the joy of being entrusted with Master Regulus' possession all those years ago, when the Mudblood girl had spoken his feelings in a way he never could have, and asked Ron and Harry to see him as something more than a walking tea tray. He still remembered that girl, and the Something in her hazel-brown eyes that had filled him with an odd sort of- was it liking for her, despite her irretrievable blood status?
He remembered that Something now because another pair of brown eyes, full of it, were glancing down at him from Lily's pixie face.
And Dobby came to his mind suddenly, the great fool, still talked of in the Hogwarts kitchens as a hero… Harry Potter had freed Dobby. He still couldn't understand why Dobby had wanted such a thing, but the knowledge that Harry had cared about what a servant had wanted, had given Kreacher the only remnant of Master Regulus' heroic life without his even expressing that he wanted it- Harry Potter saw need and want in creatures who weren't supposed to have them… and he made them a priority.
Someone besides Kreacher had had desires, and fears- and Harry hadn't felt right until they were addressed. Which meant that they existed… and if they existed, then perhaps the mercy of having them answered, even as a token of gratitude from a master to a servant, could be alright.
If Lily had put a hat on him years before, Kreacher would have stayed. He loved this family. And in spite of how Kreacher had once taken Sirius from Harry, he had not dismissed the old elf.
And suddenly Kreacher recalled how on Easter, Ginny had served him his own plate of the lamb with mint jelly, and how he had sat at the end of the table querulously, watching the children break open those Easter eggs, and they had all offered him one from their collections… He remembered how Albus had thanked him on that long-ago birthday, cupcake frosting all over his face… and the memories of tea parties past, of Lily anticipating the day she could serve Kreacher tea herself, all came rushing back.
The Potters would not dismiss him, if Kreacher wanted to stay. Even if their magical contract was broken.
Kreacher was family.
He had to say the word out loud, though, before it could be real.
"Yes, of course!" Lily said, the laugh back in her piping voice. "And now you can go out with Winky any time you like! Please, Kreacher, please stay with us- who will come to my tea parties, if you leave?"
If. It was a beautiful concept. If he wanted.
A smile broke on the old elf's withered face, to match the one on the girl's.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, Miss Lily, I'll stay. I'll always stay for your tea parties. "
"Only don't tell Daddy I forgot about the clothes!" she reminded, suddenly looking concerned. "He gets mad when I don't remember to feed Arnold, and I don't want him to know I forgot this too!"
"Of course not, Miss Lily. Of course not."
It would be their little secret, until the day he died. Which suddenly didn't seem so frightening, when it would be with people whom he loved.