Dear Wizarding Britain
Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, I probably wouldn't be playing around on fanfiction.
A/N: I'm estimating the current time frame to be around May 1998.
About three weeks had passed by from the day that Harry had come home with James. They had managed to get through the initial shopping trip fairly unscathed, and had even found a private healer's office in the local magical district, who was honored to become the personal healer for the Ford family. Said healer was named Healer Martinez and was immensely pleased to have the opportunity to be allowed to treat a family with the rare gift of metamorphmagus abilities, after Harry, of course, swore the healer to secrecy about that particular ability. The last thing they needed was anyone from Wizarding Britain or anyone else with nefarious reasons to try to track either of them down for their talents, whether they knew the Potters' true identities or not.
During the past three weeks, Harry and James had managed to create a comfortable routine, with a lot of help from Daphne, who seemed quite determined to be involved as much as she could, which Harry had come to appreciate very much. While Harry was, of course, the main caretaker for James, because he certainly didn't want to foist off his responsibilities to his new child onto anyone else, he was grateful with how enthusiastic Daphne appeared to be with stepping into the role of mother.
From Harry's perspective, Daphne was a natural with James and the bond that began to form between her and the baby was so beautiful for Harry to watch. On the rare days that James just couldn't seem to settle, no matter what Harry tried to do, Daphne was the one that was able to calm him down by just taking the baby in her arms and a little whisper or a snuggle.
Upon witnessing the interactions between Daphne and James, Harry knew with absolute certainty that there was no way he was ever going to let her go. He knew it was much too soon for a marriage between them, though he felt pretty confident she would say yes if he'd ask, but he most definitely wanted to do something for her that would express his level of commitment to her and his gratitude for her acceptance of James.
Daphne, though initially worried when Harry appeared with James, was surprised at how natural it felt to hold and take care of James. It didn't take any time at all for her to grow to love the little guy, and she couldn't even imagine her life without the sweet little boy in it. The only thing that could make life any better, in her opinion, were if she and Harry would be able to squeeze in a little bit more alone time. A trip back out to that lagoon would be a nice little treat too, she thought, looking up a little covertly from the book she'd been attempting and failing to concentrate on, to look over at Harry who was just holding and rocking James in the rocking chair.
Daphne smiled, when Harry looked up at her, and he grinned in response, before turning his attention back to James.
Harry's current appearance looked nothing like a clone of James Potter anymore, based upon the pictures that Daphne had been shown anyways, because Harry seemed to have gotten it in his head that it would be safer all the way around if he didn't show his true appearance anymore. Daphne had once questioned it, when she realized that he wasn't showing his normal form at home and his reasoning took her a bit aback, but it was still sound reasoning.
The reason being that while James is currently only changing his hair color to match that of the person holding him or who he wanted to hold him, Harry worried that as James grew older, he would take to adopting a younger version of Harry's appearance, which may or may not be recognizable when they ventured away from their island. So at least until the world was a lot safer, or enough time had passed for people to no longer recognize him, then the least he could do to keep James safe was to alter his appearance enough that James could imitate it without worrying the rest of the family.
Daphne reminded him that most of the wizarding world wouldn't have recognized him without his scar anyway, which he no longer had, and so long as he altered his eye color a bit, there would be very few people in the general populace who could place him. But he still decided this course of action would be safer for James in the long run, and so that's what he would continue to do, even if Daphne wasn't attracted to him in his other forms. She quickly disabused Harry of that assumption by snogging the breath out of him and saying, "The only way I could find any part of you unattractive is if you went around with a bald head and no nose," causing what little breath Harry had left to be gone from the laughter that followed.
Giving herself a mental head shake back to the present, Daphne said casually, "What would you say to asking one of the others or the elves to keep an eye on James once he goes down for a nap, so that you and I could go visit the lagoon again?"
Harry jerked his head back up at that suggestion and turned to meet her eyes, after a very short pause, Harry replied a bit huskily, "I would say that I would look forward to that."
"As would I," Daphne responded with a smirk and a slight purr in her tone, causing Harry's eyes to darken in response.
Then Harry cleared his throat and looked back down at James, "Oh, look, James is asleep." Looking back up at Daphne, he said, "I'll meet you at the front door," before standing up, carrying James, and walking towards James' nursery to make arrangements with Winky to come for him if James woke up before they were back.
After an enjoyable time of snogging with some heavy petting, mixed in with some light swimming, Harry and Daphne started back towards the house, walking hand in hand.
"Do you think James has managed to get settled enough for all of us to go on that vacation we were planning before you brought him home?" Daphne asked conversationally.
Harry thought for a moment and said, "Yeah, we never did all agree on a location before I picked James up, did we?"
Daphne smiled and shook her head no, "It seems rather difficult for all of us to choose a place," she replied. Teasingly, she added, "Perhaps you, as our leader, should just pick someplace for us."
Sputtering at being called the leader, Harry responded, "I don't know where you come off calling me the leader, I'm just Harry."
"You're more than just Harry, Harry," Daphne replied fondly. "But you are our leader, even if you don't want to be. It's really just a matter of logic, if you think about it. You own the island, you control the wards; therefore, you are the de facto head of house, which makes you our leader."
"Pfft. I certainly never set out to become anyone's leader, Daphne, I view everyone here as my family," Harry replied stubbornly.
"As does the ideal head of house," Daphne replied cheekily.
Harry chuckled in response and decided to get back to the main topic, "So which do you think would be better, having everyone write down where they want to go, then drawing it out of a hat; or enlarging a map and hanging it on the wall, everyone throws a dart, then research the location of each dart to see which has the most agreeable attractions?"
"Well, the darts in the map, certainly, does sound a bit more fun," Daphne replied thoughtfully.
Nodding thoughtfully, Harry added, "Then I suppose that's what we can do after supper tonight."
Daphne's response was a smile and quick kiss to his cheek, before they arrived back at the house.
Harry returned to his room to shower and change just as James woke up from his nap, a little fussy from needing a nappy change, which Harry quickly took care of before requesting that Winky stay with James while he showered and changed clothes, which he was able to do within five minutes.
"Thank you, Winky," Harry said, as he picked James up from the crib and cradled him in his arms.
"You is welcome, sir," Winky squeaked. "Winky will get Master Jamesy a bottle." Then she proceeded to pop out before Harry could respond, but was back in just under a minute with the bottle.
Smiling, Harry took the bottle from Winky and said, "Thanks," before he placed the bottle at James' lips to see if he was hungry enough to eat, and considering how quickly James latched onto said bottle, he certainly was hungry.
Winky gave Harry a fond smile as she watched him feed James a moment before popping out to work in the kitchen.
After the dishes from the evening meal had been cleared away, Harry made a noise that got everyone's attention.
"Well, Daphne reminded me of the vacation we were all trying to plan before I came home with James, so I thought now might be a good time to talk about it and come up with ideas on locations," Harry told everyone, once he had their attention.
"And where are we going—"
"—oh great leader," the twins asked in their typical twinspeak.
Harry rolled his eyes at being referred to their great leader and said, "I haven't made the decision on where to go, because I thought that in order for it to be fair, we could attach a large world map to the wall, then we'll all take a turn to randomly throw a dart at it.
"Once everyone has had a turn throwing a dart, we research the places the darts landed on and find the one that has the most attractions that we're all interested in," Harry concluded.
"Oh, that sounds like fun," Luna replied a bit airily.
"What about James?" Hermione asked curiously.
Harry looked confused by the question and said, "He'll be with me, of course."
"But some of the types of places we'd previously considered wouldn't really be an appropriate place to bring a baby," Hermione responded, sounding almost as if she thought Harry was using poor judgment.
Daphne rolled her eyes and piped in, "Granger, most of the adult-themed activities would be more active at night, which is when James would likely be sleeping anyways."
Not quite ready to let it go, Hermione replied, "Even if James is sleeping, many of the adult-themed activities would be highly inappropriate to have a baby present for."
"What makes you think he would be present?" Harry asked curiously.
"Well, you just said that you planned to bring him, so where would he be if he wasn't present?" Hermione questioned, sounding unusually confused.
"I have absolutely no issues with staying behind at the hotel with James while the rest of you go out to have fun during the evenings," Harry replied.
"But don't you want to go out and have fun with us?" Hermione queried. "What about Daphne? Surely, she'll want you to come out to spend evenings with her.
Harry turned to look at Daphne, who had decided to respond, "While I'm sure I would enjoy going out with Harry in the evenings, just the two of us, I also understand that he's a father that wants to be responsible for his son." She met Harry's eye with a smile and told him directly, "I quite enjoy observing you while you're taking care of James."
Turning her attention back to Hermione, Daphne continued, "Besides, I can just stay behind with him if I want to spend time with him."
"And if there is something in particular that Daphne and I decide we want to go out and experience, I still have the option of calling Dobby or Winky to the hotel to watch over James while we're out," Harry replied. "It's not as if distance will be a problem for them."
When Hermione looked as if she was going to come up with another objection, Neville decided to jump in and asked, "Back to throwing darts at a map; where and when are we going to do that?"
Harry shrugged and said, "Whenever. We can copy a map to enlarge from the library and set it up tonight, or we can set it up tomorrow. Whenever you all want to do it."
"Is the plan still to go muggle?" Blaise asked curiously. He was still a bit unsure about the muggle world, having very little experience with it, but Hermione had been helping him a lot more than his Muggle Studies class had done at Hogwarts.
Nodding, Harry replied, "While I'm not opposed to finding someplace with a nearby magical district, I'd prefer that we stay in a muggle hotel and stay mostly on the muggle side. It's safer and easier to blend in with the muggles than it is to blend in with the magicals, because the magicals are such a small community that a large group of unknown magicals might draw the kind of attention we don't want."
Blaise nodded in understanding and said, "As long as there's access to a magical district, I'll be content."
Standing on the deck, as the cruise ship moved away from the port, Harry mumbled to himself as he cradled James in his arms, "How the hell did we wind up on a Disney cruise?"
A/N: Having never been on a cruise of any kind, it's debatable as to how detailed this vacation is going to be written, but from what I saw when I looked online, there's plenty of adult entertainment on a Disney cruise. Plus, it seemed like something I would imagine purebloods to be confused and fascinated by.
Side note, I have not done an extensive amount of proofing on this chapter. If you notice anything glaringly obvious, let me know. I was dealing with a lot of interruptions while trying to write it.