The Boy Who…Texts?
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[A/N at the end]
"James!" Harry yelled as he put the object of his frustration onto the coffee table in front of him and took his glasses off. He'd spent the better half of an afternoon trying to figure out how to use the blasted thingand he cleaned the lenses of his glasses perhaps a bit tooaggressively. "James!' He yelled again in frustration.
Harry counted to ten in his head and ruffled his hair a few times before he heard the sounds of his son's heavy footsteps rushing around upstairs. A door slammed hard and Harry flinched as he put his glasses on.
"Yeah dad?" Harry jumped a little at how close his son was to him, and he took a few seconds to calm down before looking up at James.
Out of all his children, James was the one whom he considered as the most perfect amalgamation of his and Ginny's features. At fifteen, he was already almost as tall as him and a part of Harry hoped that his son wouldn't outgrow him. Where Albus and Lily had inherited his dark locks, James had inherited his maternal grandmother's dark auburn hair – which he had styled into a shag reminiscent of James senior's. Unlike Al, James had a certain air of mischief about him and he seemed to have a constant smile lingering on the corners of his lips.
"Can you help me with this?" Harry pointed at the dratted thingon the coffee table, and he only justheard his son's snicker of amusement. "I think it's broken and I need to send a text to your mum."
James took a seat next to him, all knobbly knees and elbows, and reached for the slim silver phone atop their raw wood coffee table. Harry watched with keen eyes as he made mental notes of what his son was doing. James fiddled around with the phone, inspecting its' exterior before he touched his thumb to the bottom of it, Harry opened his mouth to say something more about how defective the phone was but was cut short by the screen turning white and a small black apple appearing in the middle of it.
"How did you do that?" Harry asked, confused. James hadn't done anything hehadn't, so why had the phone magicallyturned on at hisslightest touch?
"I just pressed the thing on the front," James replied matter-of-factly and almost sounding bored.
"There is no thingon the front." Harry took another look at the phone to confirm his statement before continuing, "It's just glass."
"Dad, look. You literally just put your finger on this part here," James explained as he showed him the spot on the bottom of the phone where he put his finger, and a brilliant picture of a flower appeared along with the time and the date. "And it'll open by itself, you just swipe up." He demonstrated the step and Harry wrote mental notes and stored them somewhere in his mind. "Easy."
As if!Harry thought to himself, bewildered at how complicated a phone could be.
It had been Ginny's idea to try using phones as a family years ago. He had gotten along quite well with his old flip phone, all he reallyneeded it for was to call and send messages to his wife and children. But apparently technology was moving at the speed of light these days and there seemed to be a new phone coming out everyday – each more complicated than the last.
He had received his newest phone for his birthday last week, his old flip had died tragically when he dropped it while chasing a former Death Eater through Diagon Alley. He had tried to use magic to fix it before he was reprimanded by Arthur for trying to charm it; he'd said something about not charming things if you didn't know where it kept its' brains.
The sleek phone buzzed in James' hand and a loud ping brought his attention back to the present. A white rectangular box appeared on the screen with a message from his wife and a few colourful looking icons. Before Harry could take the phone out of his son's hand to keep him from reading the clearly explicitly worded message from Ginny, James groaned in disgust and dropped it into the empty bit of sofa between them.
An awkward silence enveloped them in an uncomfortable bubble of tension, and Harry wished that he had never asked for help. His son was probably never going to let him live it down, afterhe'd gotten over the humiliation of it all of course. Luckily for him, it was James that decided to break the silence.
"Do you need help with anything else?" James muttered as he tried to avoid Harry's gaze and looked down at his stained hands. Harry knew that he shouldask why his hands were purple, but he wanted his son out of the room as soon as possible.
"I just need you to tell me how to send a text and then you can go."
James nodded in response and picked up the phone gingerly with one hand. He held it with his fingers, making sure to avoid touching it with his whole hand; Harry thought it was rather silly. It wasn't like the phone itself was going to reveal even more damning secrets about his and Ginny's love life. Unless of course she decided to send a follow-up message.
"So you can just swipe this box to the right," James explained as he swiped the white box with Ginny's name on it to the right with the tip of his finger. "And then you just tap this little box and type whatever you want."
"Alright, I think I've got it," Harry replied as he took the phone from his son's hand and familiarised himself with the buttons. He went through everything his son had taught him, with a few interventions from James, before finally feeling confident enough to do it himself.
"So, are you alright to do it yourself dad?" He asked, his eyes pleading for him to say yes.
Clearly his son was still embarrassed and despite the overwhelming urge to further humiliate him, Harry simply nodded and watched as his son hurriedly sprinted back upstairs to his room and shut his door with a bang.
Harry shook his head a few times and chuckled as he opened his messages and replied to Ginny's message from earlier:
Jsmes read you. Text. Call me iof you want to sat that sort of thikng. Harry. Xo
Harry pressed the send button and grinned with pride when in little grey writing it said 'delivered' underneath his blue text bubble. Texting on this sort of phone seemed to be a hundred times easier once you'd gotten the hang of it. Sure, his text was littered with spelling errors, but he blamed that on his fat thumbs. Despite his shocking spelling, feeling confident Harry sent another message to his wife:
Dimner wghen you get back? James is goin to a sleepover. Al at malfoys. Lil with Ron. House empty, Can take up on yoit previoius offer…H
Harry waited a few seconds after sending and felt excitement bubble up inside his chest as three small grey dots appeared on the screen below his text in their own little grey bubble. He had no idea what it meant, but whatever it was had to be good if it was in the same colour bubble as Ginny's previous text.
Before he could see what the dots were doing, the screen turned black and he touched his thumb against the bottom of the screen – just like how James had done it before. Two little letters greeted him and that's all it took for Harry to become eager for when his children would leave and his wife would come back from her trip.
Dinner couldn't come a moment too soon.
Author's Note
This has not been edited so I apologise for any spelling/grammar/punctuation errors!
I will go back and edit it at a later date xo
Word Count: 1322
Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges and Assignments)
Assignment # 9
Subject: Religious Education
Task: 1, Write about sending a message to someone
I hope you all enjoyed this story x
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Until next time, Andy x