House: Slytherin
Category: Themed
Prompt: Cookies
Word count: 2006
There weren't many rules in Potter household - or at least, not a lot of formal rules. The standard ones of 'no shouting unless it's Mum or Dad or when both are absent', 'no running in socks on tiles', 'no getting caught eating sweets before dinner' etc. Between the Weasley's house of organized chaos, and the fact that Harry had grown up with too many rules, they had both decided to keep things simple in their home.
There was one, however, that everyone adhered to - the 'cookie Saturday night' rule.
"Harry! We need one more bar of chocolate!" Ginny shouted from the kitchen, checking the cupboards and the list she was holding in her hand.
"Got it!" Harry rushed down the stairs, six-year-old Lily Luna hanging for dear life to his back. Seven-year-old Albus Severus and nine-year-old James Sirius flew down seconds behind their father, child-sized aprons already tied and hands squeaky clean. "Please occupy these rascals while I'm at it!"
"No problem! Al! James! Lily!" Ginny shouted, and the three children rushed into the kitchen, clamoring for their mother's attention as Harry slipped out. "Hands?"
All three hellions lifted their hands for inspection, and their mother made a show of carefully inspecting every single hand down to fingernails. At last, she gave an approving nod to them, and Lily giggled while the boys smirked.
"Good. Lily, you're on the list duty -" Lily whooped and ran to hug her mother, while her brothers groaned, "- Al, you're mixing, James, you're retrieving and prepping."
James just rolled his eyes but got to it without complaint. "Powders, mix, liquids, mix," he parroted the way the ingredients were mixed for Ginny's sake.
Ginny nodded, arms crossed. "I'll be doing the scooping and baking - no complaints!" she raised her voice to be heard over Lily's and Al's loud whining. "If you want those cookies, you'll start working now!"
"Yes, mum!"
Harry rolled his eyes as he entered the house, arms filled with the supplies, and found himself confronting the familiar scene. White powder - flour or sugar, Harry wasn't quite sure which, since he wasn't close enough - decorated the floor and parts of the kitchen countertop. The kids had no white spots on them, so it had to be sugar. The butter was melting in the small pan, watched over by his wife, whose face had the same reddish undertone as her hair, and the three rascals appeared to be fighting over the -
"What in the name of Merlin's pants is going on here?"
Lily, the ultimate daddy's girl, abandoned the fight over the paper cups for cookies and flew to her father, apron and hands miraculously clean of any suspicious substances. Ginny only sighed and shot her husband her signature please help me with the monsters look
"Dad, Al and James don' wanna gimme cups!" the auburn-haired girl wailed, her speech slurred and muffled as she burrowed her head into her father's coat.
"Liar," Albus sneered, dancing away from James' long arms as the older boy unsuccessfully tried to steal the cups away. "You're just being selfish, Lils."
"If anyone's selfish, it's you, Al," James growled, eyes fixed on the small packet in Albus' hands. "You hogged all the mixing, and now you want to put the cups in, too?"
"Lils was bratty the whole time, and you ate half the chocolate we're supposed to use in the batter," the second Potter son retorted hotly. "I'm the only one who did his job and caused no damage to anyone or anything."
"Al, James, enough!" Harry ordered, lifting Lily up and striding into the kitchen, supplies left forgotten at the entrance doors. "Lily, Lily, please don't cry," he soothed his youngest until her eyes weren't shiny from the unspilled tears in them. He put her down and turned to his sons, arms crossed. "I'm disappointed. You were supposed to do this together, not squabble like a herd of cats and dogs. Get out of the kitchen."
Al and James' eyes widened in shock, while Lily shot her brothers a smug grin. Harry noticed it, of course, and turned his gaze on Lily, too.
"You too, missy. Fighting with your brothers and being nasty on purpose is not how a sister should behave. Your mother and I will finish the cookies, while you go in the living room and think about what you've done."
Done with dispensing the justice, Harry returned for the supplies and carried them to the kitchen table, where he started sorting them out manually. Sure, he could use magic for it, but Saturday was the day Ginny and Harry agreed on when talking about introducing kids to the Muggle world. Wizards had been forced to quickly adapt to the new methods of the surveillance Muggles used, since you couldn't exactly erase the damning evidence from the CCTV tapes.
Harry had been more than glad to show first his wife, then his kids, how a typical Muggle lived, and with a few educational trips to 'Uncle Dudley' (Harry still couldn't believe he and his cousin were talking to each other normally) to brand those lessons permanently in their minds.
"Thank you," Ginny murmured with a quiet sigh, pouring the melted butter into the mixing bowl and energetically mixing it in the brownish dough. "I wanted to do it myself, but..." she gestured vaguely with the hand not holding the ladle, "you know."
Harry nodded and offered a comforting smile and a hug from behind. "I know."
And boy, did he know. Lily, Al and James usually got on relatively well, but the Potters learned never to take things for granted - the amount of time needed for a simple squabble to transform into a full-blown fight was counted in milliseconds.
"I just wish I could read them as well as you can," Ginny whispered, pulling out her wand and tapping the mixing bowl, making it float over to the paper cuts and fill it just over halfway up. "How do you know when they'll explode?"
Harry sighed, burying his face into Ginny's wild red mane. "Uncle Vernon never had obvious tells," he told her somberly. "I had to learn those little tells if I wanted to avoid hospitals. It just comes naturally nowadays."
Ginny sighed as well and turned, hugging her husband. They rarely talked about Harry's life before Hogwarts, and she never pushed, for which Harry was grateful. He knew she also glossed over parts of her life before Hogwarts: that lonely year when Ron left for Hogwarts and she was the only child in the house, the year when Bill graduated and left her… The pair also avoided the topic of the war almost entirely. Some wounds were better left alone.
They were messed up pretty good, but they had one another, their friends, and now their children to lean on and take strength from.
Harry leaned on the doorpost of the living room, quietly observing the trio sprawled on the couch and the armchairs, who were determined not to look at one another, and rolled his eyes skyward before striding in and plopping down next to Al on the couch. He didn't even blink as the three sets of eyes turned on him.
"So, calmed down yet?" he asked casually, ignoring the tension in the room. "Because I don't know about you three, but I kinda want to eat those cookies, and you know how your Mom is when it comes to eating."
James scoffed and leaned back into his armchair, Lily perked up and fixed a hopeful gaze on her father, and Albus only stared blankly at the glass table. Harry sighed inwardly and mentally prepared himself: time to bring out the big guns.
"So you don't want them?" He prompted the three, knowing at least one of them would cave.
"I want them!" Lily instantly protested, forever the little sugar-addict.
"Then apologize to Al and James," Harry shrugged as if he didn't care. "Then you'll be able to go and eat." He dragged every single shred of Slytherin cunning the Sorting Hat had seen in him to create a flawless, emotionless poker face. He may have been a Gryffindor, but fatherhood taught him to appreciate the subtle mental manipulation he needed to make his kids do things they hated.
Albus raised his eyebrows, the first reaction since he was sent out of the kitchen. Lily blanched, and James scowled at his father.
"No way I'm apologizing to the pipsqueak," James drawled, reminding Harry uncomfortably of Draco Malfoy. It couldn't be often seen, but Harry worried James inherited too much of his and Ginny's stubbornness and pride. Coupled with frankly ridiculous expectations some people had of Chosen One's children, it created a defense mechanism Harry feared would be seen as elitist.
"I'm sorry Al, James," Lily squeaked out and tried to rush out of the room before her father's stern gaze stopped her dead in her tracks.
"Boys?"
"I'm sorry, Lily," Albus finally spoke, eyes slightly unfocused, but Harry detected the sincerity in his voice, so he let it slide. "And sorry to you too, I guess, James."
James did not answer for the longest moment, dark brown eyes locked onto the marble-like quality of Harry's expression, before exhaling noisily and waving it all away.
"Yeah, me too, Al, Lil." He yawned and stretched casually in his seat. "So, cookies?"
Harry smiled softly and stood up.
"... and then, I went up to Malfoy and asked, completely casually, 'Why haven't you said anything before, Malfoy? I could've arranged you a far worse date, you know.' His face was priceless." Harry wrapped up his story amidst peals of laughter, grinning like a madman. Everyone sitting at the table was laughing, and Lily's laughter bordered hysterical as she swayed dangerously on her chair.
"I can't believe you managed to keep your face when you said that," Ginny gasped through laughter, clutching her sides, ignoring the half-eaten cookie sitting in front of her. "What did Zabini say?"
"He just smirked and turned to Hermione to discuss some of the laws she was drafting for the inclusion of Veela," Harry recalled. "Merlin, it's a good thing Ron hadn't been there - he was stuck on lookout duty. Can you imagine what he would've said?"
James sniggered, twirling his own cookie between his fingertips. "Probably something Aunt Hermione would hex him for later."
"No, he wouldn't," Albus snickered. "He'd say something so inappropriate, Aunt Hermione would've hexed him for immediately, Ministry officials and foreign dignitaries be damned."
"Language, Albus Severus!" Ginny reproached, sending Harry a scolding look. "Would you stop cursing around our children?"
Harry raised his hands in surrender. "Danger of the duty, Gin. You can't survive one day in the job without cursing out at least a few people." He gave her an innocent look.
"Aurors," Ginny spat out the word, but the acidic level of the words was mellowed out by the small smile still clinging to her lips. "If you manage to lure one of the children in the same line of business Harry, I swear you will never have to worry about watching your tongue around anyone."
Harry shuddered at the threat, even though he knew Ginny hadn't really meant it and stuffed the cookie into his mouth to prevent himself from speaking and digging his grave even further. Being on the other end of Ginny's Bat-Bogey Hex was just nasty.
"Why wouldn't he have to watch his tongue, Mom?" Lily asked innocently, and Albus and James sniggered as the two adults exchanged panicked looks. You couldn't exactly say to your six-year-old daughter her Mom indirectly threatened her Dad to cut off his tongue, could you?
"Why-why don't you take another cookie, Lily-flower?" Harry finally suggested, valiantly ignoring his sons' knowing looks. "This one looks really tasty."
"Okay!" Lily pounced on the cookie Harry offered, gobbling it down in record time before fixing Ginny with a pleading look. "Can we bake more?"
Harry's and Ginny's eyes widened together with James' and Albus' as they recalled Lily on sugar high.
"NO!"
