Disclaimer: Do I have to do this every single time? I do not own anything except the plot and characters you don't recognise.

A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed the last chapter. I was overwhelmed. I've never gotten more than 3 reviews per chapter and I was so happy that I felt inspired enough to write my quickest update ever! Also, my longest update ever. The break from the first person POV is temporary. I just wanted to try something different. Enjoy! Review! Thank you! Exclamation mark!

It is a morning like any other morning at the Harris household. As always, Mrs. Harris is already up and about making breakfast for her dears. Today, it will be perfectly round pancakes. Mrs. Harris doesn't like funny shapes.

She glances at the egg-shaped clock next to the fridge, and noticing that it is already 7:30, decides she's just in time to wake her daughters up.

'Hallie! Audrey!' she yells. They promptly wake up. Mrs. Harris' voice carries.

The two Harris sisters are very different in terms of the whole 'waking up issue', as Audrey calls it. As always, Audrey stumbles all the way out of her room and feels her way to the bathroom. She has to resort to these extreme measures because she momentarily lacks the gift of sight; in fact, Audrey Harris is one of those people who wake up every morning thinking: 'Everything here is so bright!' and consequently decide to keep their eyes shut for as long as they can.

For Audrey, this corresponds to the length of the trip from her room to the bathroom. She eventually gets there, as she does every morning, only to notice that Halfrek is already in there. For a change.

Strangely enough, she can't be bothered right now to argue with her sister.

'Hallie, wake me up when you're done, okay?'

'Whatever,' Hallie attempts to say, although it comes out more as 'uauavar'. Hallie is, in fact, in the process of rubbing some cream on her face. Poor thing! She still hasn't reached the age in which she will eventually accept the fact that she can't possibly be completely zit-free and that no amount of miracle cream will do that to her.

By now, of course, Audrey Harris has learnt to decipher anything that her sister thinks passes as speech, and with a generic movement of her shoulders (she doesn't quite have the energy for a full-force shrug), she turns around to go back to her room and get those 5 extra minutes of sleep which will completely rejuvenate her.

She is stopped, however, at mid-step by her mother's voice yelling:

'Aud, sweetie, don't go back to sleep!'

The narrator shall open a parenthesis here and briefly mention how since becoming a mother, Mrs. Harris seems to have acquired the extraordinary ability to hear sounds beyond the normal human range of decibels. In this case, despite being on the first floor of the house, in the kitchen, and with the sound of pancakes being cooked, she has heard of her daughter's intention of going back to sleep. If the narrator had poetic tendencies, she would describe the house as an amphitheatre and Mrs. Harris as the stage. Everything is so perfectly constructed that everybody hears what she says and she hears what everybody else says. But the narrator is not a poet, so she will not make this comparison.

The parenthesis has now been closed.

At Audrey's legitimate wish to get more sleep, one might think, 'so what?' It is obvious that whoever should have the inexperience to think that is not aware that if Audrey Harris is not forcibly restrained from going back to sleep after waking up once, it becomes Mission: Impossible 8 to wake her up again. Since unfortunately the Harris family does not have Tom Cruise handy, they cannot allow Audrey to go ahead with her evil plan. It so happens that such is the situation every single morning.

So Mrs. Harris yells again, just to make sure:

'Audrey! You're not going back to bed are you?'

As a matter of fact, she was. But she's not going to say that. Instead, she says:

'Mother! My God, have you got Dumbo ears? Can't anyone have any privacy in this house any more? Should I stop talking on the phone now just because you've got demonic ears or something?'

The sleepy girl then throws a little tantrum in which she makes high pitched sounds of annoyance and stomps her feet. Hallie can be heard laughing from within the bathroom.

'Honey, you're going to wake your father up!'

'Whatever! Why does he get to sleep anyway? This is so unfair! Everything here is so bright!'

One might notice from that last comment that Audrey has attempted and failed to open her eyes. But before she gets the chance for another tantrum, Hallie opens the bathroom door, fully dressed and looking as fresh as a rose (thus the different morning routines of the two sisters become very clear). She seems to be wearing a shorter skirt than usual, which is peculiar, as it is raining outside.

Audrey chooses to ignore this for the time being and heads into the bathroom where after a splash of cold water on her face and everything else one does in a bathroom, she stops thinking that everything is so bright and reacquires the ability to open her eyes.

However, her legs still don't seem to be responding too well and she almost trips on the carpet on her way downstairs.

Mrs. Harris, of course, hears.

'Honey, be careful! You don't want to fall down the stairs again, now, do you?'

'Gee, mom, thanks for the tip!'

'No problem, sweetheart!'

This, of course, all works like a charm. Next thing you know, Audrey Harris is falling down the stairs. She thinks she's going to die, like that time her uncle d'Hoffryn dropped her out of the…oh wait, you know that one already.

She doesn't die this time either. She doesn't even get hurt. But she does get pissed. Meanwhile, Hallie, who's already in the kitchen, laughs.

'Audrey, did you fall down the stairs again?'

'Yes mom.'

Mrs. Harris' curiosity seems to have already been satisfied.

'And I'm fine, no broken limbs or anything. THANKS FOR ASKING!' Audrey says rather too loudly.

'You're welcome.'

Audrey throws another tantrum, on a smaller scale this time, and it goes unnoticed.

Finally, after much moaning on Audrey's part and much laughing on Hallie's part, three quarters of the Harris family manage to sit themselves at the table and start to eat.

Audrey notices how perfectly round her pancake is.

'Mom, did you use compasses again?'

'No. I don't need compasses. I can make perfectly circular pancakes freehand. Like Giotto. I actually met Giotto, you know. Oh, and don't tell your father this, but I modelled for him!'

'Wow! Mom, was it a nude?'

'No, he was trying to draw harpies, so I showed him my demon face. I actually appear in quite a few paintings of his. But don't tell your father, you know him, he'd just get jealous and think I posed nude. Which I did.'

Her daughters look at Mrs. Harris open-mouthed.

'It's true. Oh, but not for Giotto,' Mrs. Harris adds.

'Oh!' both girls nod.

'Did I just hear nude? Who's nude?'

'Xander, you're awake? I thought you didn't have any meetings this m-'

The reader will be understandably wondering why Mrs. Harris has not concluded her sentence. The mystery has a very simple explanation indeed. Instead of the usual business suit his girls see him wearing every day (for Mr. Harris, when not involved in teaching self-defence to the non-mystically endowed at the Academy, is one of the top managers of a construction firm and always wears suits. His wife proudly calls him the American dream made human) Mr. Harris has made his appearance today dressed in a red tracksuit. It would appear to the casual observer that he is going jogging. Of course, anyone who actually knew Mr. Harris would know that he would never bring himself to waking up early every morning to actually engage in said activity.

Which explains why Mrs. Harris has stopped speaking.

Mr. Harris gives a small bow and declares:

'Behold, the master of fitness.'

His girls just gape.

'Dad, why are you dressed like that?' Hallie manages to get out before resuming the gape-fest.

'I'm going jogging!' Mr. Harris exclaims, beaming.

'Yes but why are you going jogging?'

At this, Mr. Harris narrows his eyes and looks at his wife, shaking his head. So Mrs. Harris starts telling her daughters just exactly what's gotten into their father.

'Well, your dad and I were just about to-'

'-watch infomercials!' Mr. Harris interrupts, laughing nervously.

Mrs. Harris rolls her eyes. 'Whatever. Your dad and I were just about to watch infomercials last night when-'

This time, it is Halfrek who interrupts. 'It's OK, dad, she can say sex.'

'Sex? Sex? How do you know about sex?' Mr. Harris looks like a deer caught in floodlights. Flustered, to say the least. Mrs. Harris thinks it's quite cute.

Audrey and Hallie look at him like that was the silliest question they'd ever heard.

'Mom,' they say in unison, as if it was the most obvious thing ever.

Mr. Harris gulps.

'Can I go on now? Thank you. So, your dad and I were just about to watch infomercials when I told him that he wasn't exactly ageing well.'

'She said I'm getting chubby!'

'And then, his eye became beadier than usual, and he said:' Mrs. Harris continued, and in a rather poor imitation of her husband's voice: 'Ahn! You killed it! And he just turned around and went to sleep and I had to watch infomercials all alone! And I still think he's chubby.'

For a few seconds, nobody says anything. Mr. Harris looks at his daughters hoping they'll support him. But they don't.

'Well, she's not entirely wrong,' says Audrey, shrugging.

'See? I told you!'

'No! You girls are so mean! Auds, I can't believe this, I thought you said I was the most beautiful man on Earth!'

'I was seven when I said that, dad. Anyway, it's not like you can't be beautiful and chubby at the same time.'

'But…but…' Mr. Harris looks very very dejected. A bit like a kicked puppy.

Halfrek takes pity on him. 'I don't think you're chubby, dad,' she says, smiling at him.

Mr. Harris grins. 'Suck up!' Audrey whispers, smirking. Her father looks satisfied.

'So you're not going jogging anymore? Besides, I heard that sometimes, joggers just drop dead for like no reason when they're fifty or something,'

'Oh, that's a myth,' Mrs. Harris states, ready to destroy yet another convention. First, it was Father Christmas. Now this.

'Oh, so it doesn't happen?'

'Oh no, it does happen. It's a myth that there's no reason. Sometimes, anyway. There's this demon, Jilfoypogh. It feeds on joggers,'

'That's horrible!'

'I know. But anyway, demon or no demon, there's no reason to worry about your dad. It's not like we could expect him to jog regularly. At least not for more than a week.'

'Why?' the other three say, Mr. Harris' face a mask of pure indignation.

'Because he's lazy. You know, like Homer Simpson.'

Oh dear! This does not look good!

'Anya!'

'Who's Homer Simpson?'

'Except, of course, that your father is a lot less yellow, a little less chubby and has more hair. Not much more of that, though.'

'What? Excuse me, I have hair! I am the master of the hairy head! Look! Look! It's so strong and dark! I have hair!'

'Audrey, do you have any idea who Homer Simpson is?'

'Nah. It must be one of the weird pop culture references they make because they're old.'

'Oh.'

'Girls, am I bald?'

'Well, you're not exactly bald…'

'Finally someone on my side!'

'But you're balding.'

'What? No! What?'

'Xander, it's OK, I won't find you less sexy because you're bald. In fact, I find it virile. Anyway, you can just shave your head and it'll look like you actually had a choice.'

'That's true.'

'But I'm not balding!'

'It's OK, honey, just take a deep breath. You're not the only man in the world who's balding. Even Brad Pitt is balding.'

'But I'm not balding!'

'Of course you're not, sweetie.'

'I think Brad Pitt looks great anyway.'

'Oh, about that, I was reading one of mom's old Cosmos the other day and there was a poster of him inside one. You can have it if you want.'

'Really? Oh my God, Aud, thank you so much!'

'It's OK, I'll give it to you later.'

'Thanks! You know I have an algebra test today?'

'You have algebra tests every day.'

'Pretty much.'

'Is that why you're even less dressed than usual? For teacher seduction purposes? I remind you that you're still underage.'

'I'm not seducing! I just value presentation in the workplace.'

'Yeah. Right.'

'Honey, I'd tend to agree with your sister on this one. You don't have to go to school looking like Ally McBeal just because you have an algebra test.'

'Who's Ally McBeal?'

'A friend of Homer Simpson's, I guess.'

'Oh.'

It is starting to get late and the girls get their lunches and bags. Since Mr. Harris is up so early, he'll drive his girls to school. On the way, he'll drop his wife at the Academy. It's really close anyway.

And thus, yet another Harris morning is concluded. It has stopped raining and it looks like the Sun is going to show up. Whatever might happen with our hydrogen fuelled star, our happy family certainly doesn't seem to need it much to be happy.