Sundays
Sunday had always been Severus' favourite day. Once upon a time, when he had been unmarried, when Harry was still 'Potter' in his mind, a thorn in his side on a good day, the bane of his existence on worse ones, Sundays were a time for quiet isolation in his quarters, followed by an intense session of brewing. He had enjoyed the fact that his presence wasn't required in the Great Hall, or in any other part of the castle, and he had delighted in shutting his door and leaving it that way until the following Monday morning.
After he had married Harry and had had to suffer the boy's presence in his quarters, Sundays had slowly started to become the time that Harry would assist him in his brewing. Looking back, it had helped him to acclimatise himself to Harry's presence, both in his life and in his home, and slowly he had come to enjoy having Harry working with him in relative harmony. They had developed a rhythm, and Severus had spent those early Sundays in their marriage getting to know the boy, finding himself appreciative of his help and, to his unending bafflement, finding that he actually liked the boy.
As time went on, and their marriage started to become less and less of a sham, weekends were spent up at the shell of the estate Severus found himself unwittingly inheriting. Sundays then started to consist of waking up leisurely on their battered old mattress in the study, seemingly getting closer and closer to waking up in each other's arms as the weeks went on. After that, they would have a quick breakfast and continue with the work to turn the shell of a house into a home.
Severus looked back on that time with immeasurable fondness. It had been then that he had begun to spend more time with Ron, and had started to really enjoy the redhead's company, seeing a different side to him that the classroom would have never afforded him. He had grown closer and closer to Harry with each visit, and had found that the practical action of restoring and renovating the house was more enjoyable than he would have ever imagined it to be. He liked having something to share with his husband, something that no one else could interfere with or take away from them, and the estate had become a secure little bubble for them both, an escape from the insanity that continued to press down on them.
After the war, and before they were parents, Sundays were devoted solely to themselves. Their home now finished and very much lived in, they would wake up wrapped around one another and one would slowly tease the other into fully waking. They would slowly and sleepily make love to one another, savouring each other's bodies and taking time and care to nurture the deep bond that existed between them. Afterwards, a languid joint shower was enjoyed before they sauntered down to the kitchen and enjoyed breakfast over the morning papers and a pot of coffee.
After the children came along, Sundays had a different meaning altogether. When Caleb was a newborn, and still felt that sleeping could be attended to when he was dead, Sunday mornings often found Severus and Harry exhausted and worn out, lying in bed with Caleb between them, one trying to catch up on sleep while the other watched over their son. A couple of years later with Caleb a toddler and Benji a newborn, Sundays were still spent in much the same way, with one of them cradling Benji and the other trying to stop an accident-prone toddler from taking a tumble off the bed.
After those first few years navigating nappies, bottles, tantrums and screaming fits that seemed to last for days, Sundays began to work themselves into a gentler rhythm once again. By the time Benji was four and Caleb was six, Sunday mornings found both boys barrelling into bed with their parents, while Dobby brought up a couple of breakfast trays from the kitchen and all four sat bunched up in the covers while breakfast was consumed messily and with much complaint about crumbs in the bed.
Caleb and Benji would treat both their parents as glorified climbing frames, and invariably Severus found himself trying to manoeuvre a piece of toast into his mouth while Caleb shuffled onto his lap and Benji wrapped his arms around his neck and asked him to read one of his favourite stories.
"Dad! Put the paper away, it's boring," Caleb said as Harry handed him a piece of toast with carefully sliced pieces of banana on top. Caleb wouldn't eat it unless there were four slices on each piece, and of course, each slice had to be the same size.
"At least one of us should be aware of what's going on in the world around us," Severus replied, reaching for the croissant that was hovering on the plate next to his elbow and taking a small bite.
"Can I have some?" Caleb asked, dropping his banana toast on his plate and eyeing Severus' breakfast.
"No," Severus told him, taking a bite and placing the croissant back on the plate.
"Dad," Caleb whined, scrambling over his brother and into his father's lap, scrunching up the maligned newspaper in the process. "Please, yours looks nicer than mine."
"Then you should have asked Dobby for one, shouldn't you?" Severus asked his son, restraining him from reaching across and grabbing the croissant that he had only been able to take one bite of so far. He didn't know why he was bothering, he couldn't remember the last time he had been allowed to finish his own food. Caleb was always convinced that someone else had a better deal than he did, and so his own food always went uneaten whilst he went foraging around everyone else's plates.
"Just a bite," Caleb negotiated.
"With a mouth that big? I don't think so," Severus replied, trying to wrench the newspaper out from underneath his son, giving up when all he succeeded in doing was to tear it in half.
"I don't have a big mouth!" Caleb said indignantly, looking to Harry to back him up. "Pa! Dad said I have a bit mouth!"
"You have a lovely mouth, Pickle," Harry said absent-mindedly as he tried to read through his teaching notes for the next day while dodging Benji's hands, which were covered in marmalade. "Ben sweetie, has any of that marmalade gone on your toast?"
"It got a bit messy," Benji replied, looking at his hands with a frown.
Harry smiled and reached over for his wand, casting a quick cleaning charm and hauling Benji onto his lap. "We're going to have to start calling you Paddington, you must be made of marmalade by now," he said as he wrapped an arm around his son while continuing to try to read his notes.
"I like it," Benji said, picking up his discarded piece of toast and licking the marmalade off the top. "I like Gran's the best though, it's nicer than this."
Harry snorted into the little boy's hair and said, "Sorry your Highness, it's just the stuff from the village shop. You'll have to make do until we see Gran next weekend."
"Gran's stuff is always the best," Caleb said matter-of-factly, halting his campaign for Severus' croissant in the process. "Uncle Ron makes the best breakfasts, and your cooking's nice Pa, but everything Gran makes is yummy."
"Well, thanks for saying my food is 'nice'," Harry said, exchanging an amused look with his husband. "I suppose that's high praise from you. Ben love, no sticky paws all over my notes please," Harry said, turning his attention back to Benji, who was trying to see what Harry was reading, and getting a fresh coating of marmalade over the papers in the process.
"Dad can I have some cwostant now?" Caleb asked Severus, not having been distracted sufficiently enough to forget his original mission.
"And what will I have for breakfast if you eat it, mm?" Severus asked as Caleb continued to shuffle further onto his lap in an effort to get closer to the hovering plate.
"I'll share," Caleb said magnanimously.
"Oh very generous," Severus scoffed, wrapping his arms around Caleb's slim waist and giving him a gentle squeeze, both to stop him grabbing the plate and for the excuse to give his son a cuddle. "Eat your own breakfast you little terror."
"Why don't you eat mine and I'll eat yours?" Caleb asked, trying to negotiate different terms.
"I don't like banana."
"Yes you do Dad," Benji said, looking over at him. "You always eat my porridge when I have 'nana in it so I don't have to and Pa thinks I eat it all."
"Oh really?" asked Harry, looking over at his husband with a smirk.
"You and I need to have a word about keeping secrets, Ben," Severus told his youngest son with a mock frown that only served to amuse the little boy as he chuckled into another mouthful of toast.
"Well then, you can have my banana toast and I can have your cwostant," Caleb said, pleased with his solution.
"You can have it if you can say it properly," Severus said as Caleb shifted and wound his arms around his father's neck.
"Cwostant," Caleb repeated.
"Try again," Severus instructed.
"Dad! You're being so mean!" Caleb said with a huff, throwing himself down in Severus' lap and eyeing the croissant wistfully.
"Oh isn't life hard?" Severus teased, burying his noise and Caleb's black hair and nuzzling his son's head. "Uh oh," he said, tightening his hold on his son, "I think my fingers have been hit with the tickle spell again!"
"No Dad!" Caleb exclaimed, squirming to try and get away. "Not the tickle spell again!"
"They have! My fingers need to tickle something!"
"No!" Caleb shrieked as Severus began to tickle his stomach and his ribs, rolling him into the centre of the bed and pinning him gently as he attacked him. "Dad! Stop it, stop!" Caleb gasped out in between giggles, and Benji pulled himself further into Harry's lap to ensure that he wouldn't be next in the line of fire.
"Pa!" Caleb shouted. "Stop the tickle spell, make it stop!" he laughed as Severus continued to pin him to the bed as he tickled his feet then his neck, making Caleb squirm and wriggle to try and get away.
"Finite Incantem," Harry said, pretending to wave his wand over Severus, who stopped was he was doing immediately. Harry rather suspected it was to avoid wet sheets from Caleb's inability to control his bladder in these situations, a fact they had found to their cost after several tickle wars.
Caleb hauled himself off the bed and ran around to Harry's side, eyeing Severus warily over the top of Harry's bent knee. "Take Ben instead!" he told his father, and Harry laughed as Benji pointed a marmalade-covered finger at Caleb and told Severus,
"No take him! He's the one who wants your crusty-sont, not me!"
"I can't believe you just sold your little brother down the river," Harry told Caleb, fighting his grin.
Caleb shrugged and said, "Little brothers have to take the heat sometimes."
Severus snorted and shifted himself to accommodate Ben crawling onto his lap, who had decided that joining forces with Severus against his brother was obviously the wisest move to make. "He's so mean," he complained to his father as Severus cuddled him.
"Am not," Caleb said, grabbing the piece of marmalade toast that Benji had left behind and stuffing it all into his mouth.
"I was eating that!" Benji protested.
"Oo 'eft it," Caleb replied, his mouth full.
"Manners!" Harry reprimanded, and Benji cast a smug look at his brother. Caleb, however, had already spied his window of opportunity, and was round to Severus' side of the bed in a flash, swiping the croissant from his plate before the man could blink.
He went running out of the room cackling like a madman and singing "I got it, I got it" as he raced down the hallway.
"Go and get him Ben, don't let him get away with it," Severus told his son, and Benji went tearing off after his brother, the noises of a very enthusiastic playfight following afterwards.
"I faced down Voldemort and yet I couldn't stop a six-year-old from stealing my breakfast," Severus said to Harry as he turned back to face him, slightly nonplussed.
"Voldemort was a doddle compared to those two," Harry said with a grin as he cast a quick cleaning charm over the bed to rid it of the resulting disarray from two messy children.
"True, very true."
Severus reached over and grabbed the lapel of Harry's pyjama top, pulling him forwards into a slow and languid kiss. Harry's arms snaked around Severus' neck and he insinuated himself into his husband's lap as the kiss deepened. With both of them keeping their ears trained on the antics of their sons, they wrapped themselves around one another and revelled in the moment of being the sole focus of each other's attentions.
"I have much more in store for you later," Severus told Harry through their link as Harry's hardness met his own. After ten years of marriage, including their first 'fake' year, Harry still had the ability to dominate his thoughts, to render his body totally in need of him.
"I can't wait," Harry responded as Severus' tongue met his own. "The house to ourselves, and our trusty old mattress back."
"I'm going to fuck you right into it," Severus growled, and Harry tightened his hold on him.
"Fuck yes," Harry moaned, wondering if his resolve would hold out until the evening. It would have to, for they had a whole day to get through first, and a Sunday lunch to prepare. The thought effectively poured cold water on him, and he pulled back reluctantly, his eyes shining. "Mm, remember when we used to spend every Sunday morning in bed slowly fucking each other senseless?" he whispered in Severus' ear.
"I remember it fondly," Severus said with a smirk. "But don't worry, I'll have you begging for mercy tonight."
"Yes please," Harry said with a dreamy sigh. "Mm, happy anniversary love."
"Happy anniversary," Severus repeated, leaning forward to place delicate, teasing kisses along Harry's jaw.
A crash came from down the hallway and both Harry and Severus groaned as they knew it meant their eldest son had likely broken something, almost certainly one of the ornaments that littered the antique mahogany table on the landing.
"It wasn't me!" came Benji's voice, swiftly followed by Caleb saying,
"It was an accident!"
Harry laughed and rested his head against Severus' forehead, saying softly, "Thank God Ron and Drake are having them tonight."
"Perhaps we could persuade them to take them permanently?" Severus said wryly.
"There's a thought. Hang on boys, we'll be right there. Don't touch anything!" he shouted down the hallway, knowing how Caleb had an uncanny knack of managing to make any situation worse. "Love you," Harry said to Severus, pressing a quick kiss to his lips before scooting off the bed and out of the room to see what chaos his children had caused.
Severus smiled, the warmth of Harry's kiss lingering on his lips. He had never imagined that one day his Sundays would consist of marmalade in bed, tickle wars and a fight over his own breakfast, but as the noise of his family drifted down the corridor, he knew he wouldn't have had it any other way.
AN: I'm having the best time with this little family, probably to counter-act the sheer angst I've been writing lately! Oh well, I hope you enjoyed it, please let me know.