"You know babe, I didn't think babies were going to be this difficult to look after." James feebly rocked his crying one-year-old son in his arms.

"Surprise, surprise," Lily mumbled from where she sat, half-asleep in the rocking chair in Harry's nursery.

The system the couple had tried to enforce, where one parent would get up to calm Harry down if he woke up, and would switch each night so the other could sleep had not worked in the slightest, leaving both parents awake in an effort to calm the distraught toddler. Lily was helping, but only slightly, as it was James' night to try and calm him down.

"Seriously, his nappy is not dirty, he doesn't need to be burped, and he isn't hungry, and he doesn't have a fever or anything, I've checked. What could be making him so upset?" James complained.

"I don't know Jamie, have you tried skin-to-skin contact? I know it isn't really used much past 3 months of age, but it could work. Lily suggested.

"Honestly, I'll try anything at this point." James yawned, moving to pass his crying son to his wife. Lily took him carefully, pulling him against her chest and rocking back and forth in the chair. Even this did little to calm the boy. James peeled off his t-shirt, which clung to his chest courtesy of the summer heat.

"Right, c'mon then son." He spoke gently, praying silently to Merlin that this attempt to put their son to sleep would be fruitful. He took the crying child back from his wife, and moved over to the changing table where he proceeded to remove the boy's thin onesie. After he pulled the boy back up and placed him gently on his chest. Immediately, the boy's sobbing slowed, although he was still extremely upset.

"I'm gonna move back to our room, so I can lay down." James smiled, shifting Harry so that he would be able to feel his heartbeat. "Hopefully this works."

Lily sighed, "Yeah, hopefully."

James moved towards his and Lily's shared bedroom, and lay down on his side of their bed when he reached it. Harry was calming down slowly, which meant that this technique was appearing to work. James would never say that it was so, for he knew the moment he did, Harry would go back to hysterics.

When Lily had slipped in beside him, and Harry was fiddling with a wayward strand of his hair as tears silently leaked from his eyes, James spoke up.

"Hopefully once all this stuff with Voldemort is over, we can come out of hiding. I know my parents left me the mansion they had up in Caithness, Scotland.

"I went up to Caithness once, it's a lovely place, it'll be nice for Harry to grow up there, but James, I don't want him spoiled, and having the personality that you had when we first met.

"Are you saying that I wasn't a nice boy when we met? Personally, I think I was the epitome of kindness."

"You know you weren't." Lily spoke. "You were such a bully to poor Severus. And look, I understand that he held extreme prejudice against muggle-borns and half-bloods, but you could have just ignored him. I only vaguely started liking you as a person in our 6th year."

"Yeah, I guess, and I don't want Harry turning out like that, I do however want him to be pranking him. He and whoever he befriends will need to carry on the Marauders legacy." He smiled deviously. Lily believed that Sirius was rubbing off on him.

"Aren't Sirius and Remus supposed to be coming over tomorrow?" She looked at the clock. "Or I guess, actually today?"

"Yeah. Tuesdays are mischief days." James looked off into the distance. Back when they were at school, Lily didn't think James was capable of having emotions. But when James' parents had died shortly after their 7th year had begun, and she had found him sobbing in an unused classroom, she realised just how wrong she was.

She knew what that faraway look meant. Peter. It meant he was thinking about Peter.

While Lily knew that Peter had never been as tightly knit as Remus, Sirius and James had been, he had still been part of their group;helping them pull pranks on other students and annoy teachers, especially their head of house. His subsequent turn to Voldemort's side had been unexpected, and also sad, for none had seen it coming.

James had seemed to take it the hardest, which didn't surprise Lily,as out of all of the Marauders, Peter had been the closest with James, for he saw the boy as something of an icon.

"It's okay, Jamie, it wasn't your fault, you had no control over what Peter chose to do."

"I just feel that, maybe if we had included him more, he wouldn't have chosen to become a death eater, and put our family in danger. Honestly," he moved to caress Lily's arm, "I don't think I'm even upset anymore. I'm angry now, and I don't know if it is at myself, or at Peter, but I'm angry, knowing that our family is in danger because of it."

"Don't be James, we're all still here, and being angry isn't helping anything. Think about the good times, like Harry's birthday party last month, and the cake that he got, somehow, all over you." Lily smiled, remembering the event. "All I am saying is that you can't change the bad things that have happened in the past, so why dwell on them?"

She could tell she had finally gotten through to James. Instead of the sad expression he had been sporting for the last few minutes, he was now sporting a dorky, crooked smile that was characteristic of him. Lily knew he was also thinking about the party.

He looked down at Harry, whose hand had long since dropped from his hair to rest on his bare shoulder. The boy was half-asleep. James rubbed his back softly. "Did you get daddy all dirty? You did, didn't you, which is very cheeky…" James trailed off into thought, and Lily knew he was thinking about how Harry's cheekiness would bode extremely well for him being a Marauder.

She slid down until she was laying in bed, and rolled over, letting a quiet "on no" slip from her lips. James chuckled quietly from beside her, and she heard the quiet clink of metal upon metal as James took off his glasses and rested them on the nightstand.

"Night, babe, thanks for talking me through everything." He mumbled.

"Night, babe, I love you."

OOOooooOOOooooOOO

James woke up to someone poking him. Which was unusual. He blearily opened his eyes, and rubbed them, not that it did much to improve his vision, which, as all of his friends mentioned at every chance they got, was absolutely horrid. Judging by the blob in his vision,and the weight on his abdomen, it was Harry.

He moved his arm off the bed and groped around his bedside table until his hand touched something cold and slender. His glasses. He shoved them on to his face, and his son became clear.

"Morning, Prongslet." He greeted.

"Da," he responded. Although it wasn't a proper greeting, James knew what it meant, and smiled. Harry poked him again, and as his finger was going down to do it a second time, James caught it in his hand. Harry burst out laughing.

"Shh." James whispered dramatically, "we don't want to wake mama."

"No wake, mama." The 14-month-old repeated. "I foo?" He asked, pointing to himself.

"Yes, you can have some food." James responded. He pulled the toddler back onto his chest and swung his legs over the side of his bed. When he was standing, he placed Harry back on the bed, and reached for his t-shirt, which he had chucked over the footboard of their bed. He pulled it on as Harry looked at him with curiosity, before he picked the child back up.

Before making his way to the kitchen, James went to the nursery.

"Foo." Harry whined.

"I know you're hungry, buddy, but your nappy is dirty and I need to change it." James replied, wondering if the child knew what he was saying. James guessed he did by the way that he huffed in response.

He swiftly changed the boy's nappy and placed him in a fresh outfit before taking him downstairs. The sun glinted through the windows as James placed Harry down in his highchair, and moved to warm up a bottle in the microwave. While the bottle was warming. James conjured a small bowl of porridge for Harry.

When everything was ready, James sat down in the chair adjacent to the toddler. Harry was busy playing with an action figure of one of the current Chudley Cannon Quidditch players. He was flying it around in the air while making broom-broom noises.

"Harry, c'mon cub, it is breakfast time, I thought you said you were hungry." James spoke.

Harry dropped the figure back onto his tray table, which was where it had been left last night, and shrugged his shoulders. "Was, not now." He mumbled. James ran a hand through his hair, trying desperately not to pull it out.

"Okay, well, I've already made you breakfast now, so can we eat it please." James asked. Harry nodded enthusiastically. As James brought the spoon towards him, Harry opened his mouth, and let his father feed him.

"Hey Harry," James spoke when he noticed his son's attention waning. "Mama and I forgot to tell you, Uncle Moony and Uncle Padfoot are coming over today."

Harry dropped his bottle of milk. "Unc' Mooy, Unc' Padfoo!" He screeched. James moved his hands to his ears.

"Remember, Prongslet, it's still early, so we gotta be quiet. Shh." James brought his finger to his mouth again. Harry mimicked him.

When Harry had finished his breakfast, James pulled him out of his highchair, and berated himself for not putting a bib on the child. He grabbed his wand from the entrance table. He pointed it at Harry's clothes and muttered, "Scourgify." Immediately, the toddler's clothes were clean. Once he had chucked all of Harry's breakfast dishes in the sink- he would deal with them later, he made his way into the living room with his son.

Once comfortable, James let Harry crawl around on the floor as he grabbed the tv remote. With effort, he managed to simultaneously keep his eyes on Harry and turn the tv on, and to a kid friendly channel. James knew, in reality, that Harry would likely be unable to understand what was actually happening, but he knew the boy enjoyed the colours and movement of the programme, and he also knew the programme was kid friendly, so it worked either way.

Once Harry was enraptured by the show, James made his way over to the cabinet, where his paperwork that he needed to fill out was waiting. He grabbed it quietly before sitting back down, and began to fill it out while his son was still distracted.

An unknown amount of time, but James guessed that it hadn't been all that long, when a voice brought him out of his reverie.

"Morning, Potter." James looked up. Lily was smirking at him as she held Harry.

"Apparently, despite your insistence that you are capable of looking after Harry, said child managed to escape you." Despite the telling off she was doing, Lily still smiled. It was common knowledge that the Potters locked anything dangerous up from Harry, making the house safe for him to be in, relatively speaking.

"I found him at the bottom of the stairs, playing with the Chudley Cannon figures again. I wonder what's made him so obsessed with them recently?" She pondered. "Have you eaten?"

"No, but Harry has." He replied.

"Yeah, I gathered by the dirty dishes in the sink." She peered over his shoulder before pulling him up by his arm.

"Okay…I'm coming, I'm coming." He muttered, following her into the kitchen.

"You need to keep a better eye on Harry, James." She scolded.

"He is usually fine when the tv is on, he'll be engrossed by it, I guess because I told him Rem and Siri were coming today he was distracted."

"Sirius flooed me a few minutes ago, said he was flooing to Remus' and then to here, said they would be here in about 30-45 minutes."

"Right." James spoke as he was handed toast by Lily. "What time is it now?"

"10:00, nearly." Lily responded, James hummed and munched on the toast.