The Evilness of Peas

"What are you doing?" The shriek rang through the house (and possibly the neighbourhood of Godric's Hollow), and caused a young woman of 21 with red hair and startling emerald eyes to look around, mouth slightly agape, spoon half-way to her infant son's mouth. Lily Potter's appearance was usually one of a kind and gentle nature (or bloodthirsty when it came to her husband's antics), but right now it was very shocked.

But getting on with the interesting part of the story.

"Are you insane?" screeched a young, rather dashingly (is that even a word?) handsome man with black hair and (stuff it, you know what Sirius Black looks like, and if you don't, imagine it) "Feeding Harry with….with….What kind of mother are you?!"

"Sirius," Lily tried to reason, "they're just peas, and they're good for you."

"What planet are you from?" screamed Sirius, tearing his hair out, "Prongs! Your wife is trying to poison Baby Harry (Cute!)! Come and help me save him! Where are you, you stupid-?"

"Padfoot, what the hell?" exclaimed a young man with glas- (it was James Potter, that's all you need to know.)

"Prongs, Lily is feeding Harry… (pause for dramatic effect)…peas!"

"Oh my God," James sighed; he knew what was coming next

"Yes! We must save little Prongsie! Run for the hills!" And with that, the possibly smashed godfather of the Saviour of the World picked up the said Saviour out of his high chair and made toward the front door. However, he was stopped when a youn- (Remus Lupin) walked through the door (I say 'walked' because this is Remus, and he's very responsible, so would only ever walk), banged into Sirius, knocking him to the floor, and amazingly, sending Harry flying out of his Godfather's hands into his actual father's.

(Why? Because this is fanfiction, and what the author (that's me!) says, goes. Happy now? Good.)

"Oh, hello," said the mild-mannered werewolf, looking at the scene before him. "Why do I not feel surprised?"

"Because it's just Sirius being an idiot, as usual," Lily huffed, putting Harry back into his highchair and doing up one of his shoes, while glaring at the man still consequently on the floor.

"I was not being an idiot! You were going to feed your son the evilness of peas! Shame on you!"

Lily: "…" (Think confused, what-kind-of-psycho-are-you look)

James & Remus: "sigh" (Think exchanged here-we-go-again look)

Sirius, finally picking himself up off the floor, noticed the reactions were not exactly as he had hoped, but decided to ignore it and move on anyway. "Peas, are the work of the dark side, they're here to destroy us all, and you, you unfortunate soul (he pointed at Lily), have been sucked in by their charm, and are now unleashing their terror on your poor son."

Utter silence followed this, as it was ridiculous. But still, Sirius pressed on with whatever knowledge cough, cough he may have had hidden beneath his shiny hair. "Let me tell you of my encounter with the peas…" A large groan was heard from the end of the room where James and Remus were standing, as they had heard this story before, and they knew they weren't getting out anytime soon. Lily on the other hand, hadn't moved for all the time Sirius was talking, as she was too disturbed to really notice what anyone was saying. "Quiet," Sirius hissed at his friends. "You WILL hear about the peas and you will learn from it!"

With that statement, James leaned into Remus and whispered "if I didn't learn from listening to it the first 19 times, I think I'm a lost cause. Do you think Sirius would let me out if I told him I feel like my liver is about to implode?" Remus could do nothing but smirk (and try not to giggle out loud). Again, Sirius ignored it. "It all began in 4th year, when Jimmy and I accidentally on purpose mooned the Slytherins at dinner, and were given a month of detention. For our first one, Prongsie had to help Sprout with the Biting Begonias," he paused to giggle, "and I had to help the house elves in the kitchens. Well, first I had to shell peas into these enormous barrels, one for each house, and then I'd have to divide the peas into 15 roughly equal amounts for each table." Sirius stopped there for he was rudely interrupted from his rather boringly descriptive story by Lily, who started yawning (she had finally regained the ability to move), and James and Remus, who had been silently moving towards the door but had accidentally run into each other, causing a lot of noise. Sirius, being the not-so patient man he was, pulled out his wand in a threatening manner, which made Prongs and Moony stop trying to escape, and Lily to sit back down and shut her mouth.

"Much better, now where was I? Oh yes, well, I got the first 3 barrels done, but as I was doing the fourth, one of the house elves came to me and tripped over a barrel, sending the peas flying, the first evil of the peas, as I was the one who had to pick them all up."

"That's not the peas' fault. It's the house elf's for tripping over," Lily decided to try to bring Sirius back to reality.

"No it wasn't! Don't you blame the house elf! They had brainwashed poor Minky to do their dirty work!" Sirius seemed immune to Lily's, ahem, contradictory statements.

"Well, whatever you say." Lily wasn't really trying very hard.

"Exactly, so that was the first of the 4 nasty deeds of the peas."

It was that moment when Remus couldn't control it any longer; he cracked up, being unable to control his hysteric laughter from the ridiculousness (that is actually a real word) of the situation, and now everyone was looking at HIM like he was mad, Sirius included, although that might have been the pot looking at the kettle, thinking it was black. But still. After about 5 minutes of non-stop, manic laughter from the poor werewolf's mouth, the rest of the household excused themselves and went to the lounge room, to listen to the rest of Sirius' rather stupid and boring story. "Poor Remus, I knew he was going to crack one day, but it's still terrible," James stated conversationally.

"Yes, pity about that, but I haven't finished my story!" Three guesses who that was. YAY! You get a cookie!

Lily & James: groan.

"Anyway, so I had to start again with the barrel, because unfortunately the house elves don't believe in the 50 min rule. So there I am, shelling peas into TWO more barrels, when McGonagall walked in to tell me my detention was over. Now, I love McGonagall, she's a great girl, but she was rather mean on this occasion and told me that I must finish the peas before I go to bed. The second bad deed of the peas, they obviously brainwashed her too. So I'll forgive her. But that meant I had to stay there, and finish the bloody peas!"

"Sirius! Watch your language around Harry!" Lily, the motherly type person that she was, exclaimed outraged!

"Whoops. Excuse the French, young Padowan."

"We really shouldn't have let him watch Star Wars," James sighed as he and his wife watched Sirius try to teach the 1 year old 'The Ways of the Force'.

"Oh well, at least he's stopped telling his stupid pea story," the young woman said calmly, and started reading. Well, until Sirius jumped on her, claiming that she was the 'Darth Vader in disguise, using peas to take over the world'. That's when he remembered his story, and told Harry rather solemnly that they would continue with his Lightsaber lessons later.

Sirius moved back into the middle of the room for maximum exposure, and persisted with his utterly absurd rendition of a good story. "So, when I had finally finished the 4 barrels full to the brim of peas, I STILL had to divide them into the 15 roughly even amounts for dinner the next night. So there I started, putting my hands into the mountains of green balls, and plonking them on plates. It was disgusting, especially when some of them were squished, so I had green squish all over my hands by the end of the first barrel. That one alone took about an hour, and it was about 2am at the time, meaning I would be tired for Quidditch the next day, the third evil of the peas. But me, being the brave, heroic hero I am ("not to mention modest" was a nice little comment added by James. "And very good with descriptions," Lily just HAD to add in. Harry did that cute little bubble gurgling thing babies do, and Sirius ignored them all), kept on fighting, never letting the peas get the better of me. Until, finally, at around 4am, I was finished. The peas were all ready to go, and I could go to bed. As I was walking out of the kitchen, I heard a crash, and Mrs Norris, that blasted cat, had knocked over my plates with my beautiful array of peas and sent a tidal wave of the aforementioned sin against nature into me, knocking me over, and nearly causing me to drown in the greeny gooeyness, except I knew, that I wouldn't let them get away with it! With my last ounce of strength, I pushed my way to the surface, and escaped. The fourth evil of the peas. See, see why they're evil?" Sirius, finally finished with his story, looked up expecting to see the faces of his friends to be looking back at him with belief and understanding in their eyes, not to see them sleeping. With slight disappointment, the pea-hating man got up and went to the kitchen to find Remus, who had stopped laughing hysterically, but still chuckling slightly, to be munching on some chocolate he found in the fridge.

"Well, they're sleeping," Sirius told his canine counterpart.

"Yeah, oh well, do you want some chocolate?" Remus wasn't too fussed.

"Doesn't anyone listen to me?"

"What did you say?"

"Oh, forget it." Walking out of the kitchen, the upset man picked up his adorable little godson and decided that next time, he was going to save this youngling from the peas. So carrying Harry, he took him back to the kitchen, ignored Remus, opened the cupboard and took out all the baby food peas. Then, waking Harry in a nice, godfatherly manner, he showed Harry the tins of peas.

"Do you see these Harry? These contain peas," he took a pea out; "these are bad for you. Do NOT eat them, and you will be saved."

And with that, he put every single pea into the sink, causing a big pea blockage, which James had to fix later.

"Oh, so that's why I don't like peas," Harry replied thoughtfully.

"Yep, Sirius was actually a big influence on what you ended up eating, seeing as he spent most of his time in the kitchen," a rather older Remus Lupin told the young Mr. Potter.

"I bet mum wasn't too happy when she found out all the peas were gone," Harry couldn't help but grin.

"Not as upset as she was when she found out I ate all the chocolate in the house, so she decided to yell at me that time, instead of Sirius."

"What a great friend you were."

"Well, he definitely remembered it."

"So, why don't I like beetroot?"

"That was your father's doing."

"Really, how?"