by tinkerbelldetention101 on archiveofourown.org
"It's alright Lily, really. Go back to bed. I've got Harry," James Potter assured his wife with a smile as he ushered back to bed.
"Are you sure, dear? It's just a little head cold, honestly. I'll be fi-fi-fi-ACHOO!" Lily Potter had the grace to blush as her husband laughed.
"I'm sure, love. Now off to bed with you, and don't come back down until you're right as rain." James made a shooing motion as he opened their bedroom door. Lily shook her aching head at him, but gratefully slipped back into their bed and snuggled beneath the covers all the same.
"When Harry gets up from his nap, make sure he eats his lunch. Don't feed him sweets again, James - you know how he gets. And don't let him play with your wand. Took a week to get the poor cat to come out of hiding after his last misha-a-a-ACHOO!" Lily sneezed again and shook her head. This blasted cold...
"I know, love. I promise, your precious darling will still have all body parts attached when you wake up. And Harry should be just fine, too," James winked at her as he backed out of the door. Lily rolled her eyes and flung a pillow in his direction, just missing him as the door closed behind him.
James made his way back downstairs, and had made it just to the last step when he heard the familiar sound of his son's giggles from the nursery at the top of the same stairs. With a sigh (so much for "James Time") and a small shake of his head, he turned and headed back up the stairs.
"Good morning, little man," James whispered, bending to pick his pajama clad son up from the crib. A stream of incromprehensible babbly was the nine month old's only response. "Oh really, bud? Tell me more."
Harry continue his babbling as his beloved "Dada" carried him to the changing area for a clean up and a change of clothes. After all, one can only stay in their nightclothes for so long.
And Lily might honestly murder James if he left Harry in pajamas all day.
"What say we get you fed, Harry?" James murmured, staring into his little boy's green eyes. As always, the mention of food seemed to capture the child's attention and the babbling increased, punctuated with little claps of the tot's hands. "Alright, alright. Let's just get to the kitchen, yeah? And don't be too noisy - Mummy isn't feeling well. Let's let her sleep."
"Mama?" the tot replied, eyes darting around.
"Mummy isn't feeling well, Harry." James regretted mentioning Lily almost immediately. Though he knew Harry loved him, Harry was nothing if not a mummy's boy. A single mention of his mother when she wasn't in sight was often enough to incite the small boy to tears until Mummy came running. And sure enough...
When no sign of his red headed mother made itself known, Harry's face crumpled. James watched his son take a deep breath, his little face turning red, and then..."MUMMA! MUMMA! MUMMA!"
"Shh!" James whispered, picking Harry up and dashing out of the room and down the stairs. "Hush, Harry. Mummy is sleeping. She'll be down when she's feeling better, alright?"
Harry, for once, seemed to grasp what James was saying. Although the tears didn't abate, he ceased his shrieks, settling for snuggling into his father's shoulder and sniffling instead, a single whimpered "Mumma" escaping as he did. James patted his son's back gently as he made his way into the kitchen.
Settling Harry into his high chair, James moved from cupboard to cupboard, searching for something Lily wouldn't AK him for feeding their son at lunchtime.
Well, the first cupboard contained nothing but catfood. James may only be nine months into this parenting thing, but he was pretty sure he shouldn't feed his son cat food.
The second cupboard was the one Lily had termed the "snack cupboard." Why she insisted on an entire cupboard full of crisps, biscuits, and other snack items was beyond James' comprehension, but his father had once told him "Let your witch do what makes her happy and you'll be a happy man," so he left the matter alone.
Finally, in the third cupboard (because isn't it always the third one?), he found boxes of pastas, cans of soup, and other various items he was pretty sure he could feed Harry. The only problem, of course, was that James, having grown up with house elves and therefore no need to learn, was not a good cook.
"Hmm...I don't think I can mess up heating up your mum's cooking," he informed his son. "Let's see what she's got in the cooling cabinet, shall we?"
Turns out, Lily didn't have much in that cabinet. At least, she didn't have much James didn't think he'd mess up. Finally settling on what looked like leftover mashed potato (and Merlin, did he hope that's what it was...), James quickly reheated it with a spell and grabbed a spoon.
And was immediately reminded why one should never leave one's wand within grabbing distance of a small child. Harry had his father's wand in his nose, James discovered upon turning to face him, and was giggling away.
"Now, son, that's not how we use a wand," James said with a laugh, extricating the item from the recesses of his son's nostril and wiping it quickly on his trouser leg. "'Sides, Lily will have my head if she finds you got hold of it again. Apparently, the cat is still terrified from your last go with it."
Harry nodded sagely, as if he understood his father, then grabbed the spoon from James' hand and slammed it down on his tray as hard as his little nine month old hands could manage. "BOOM!" he yelled, laughing.
"Discovered a new word, then, have you?" James asked, wresting the spoon back from the boy with a grin. "Can't let you make the spoon go boom. Need it to feed you, ya know."
The next ten minutes were filled with James attempting to feed his son and Harry refusing all attempts with an adamant shake of his head and his little hands shoving at the proferred spoon each bite. Finally, James gave up.
"Not a mash kind of kid, eh? Don't tell Mum. She'll be heartbroken."
Once again, James turned to the cooling cabinet. This time, he pulled out applesauce and smiled. This, he was pretty sure Harry would eat. And at least it would get something in the boy's stomach, even if it wasn't much of a lunch.
Applesauce did indeed go over much better with Harry and then it was time to...well, James wasn't quite sure, seeing as they were more or less stuck in the Godric's Hollow cottage they were hiding out in and the little bit of land around it the Fidelius covered. After a moment's consideration, James opted to take Harry into the sitting room and pull out his toys.
Thus followed a full thirty minutes of Harry shrieking with laughter as he threw toy after toy at his "Dada," the poor man just barely managing to dodge most of them. A few, he misjudged the trajectory of and found them bouncing off his temple, nose, and shoulder respectively.
"Alright, so. We're not interested in playing. Got it," James grumbled as the final toy bounced off his shoulder and onto his foot. "What do you want to do then, mini Prongs?"
"Mumma?" Harry said, a gummy grin accompanying the word.
"No, no Mumma. Mumma is sleeping. What shall you and Daddy do?"
Well, Harry may have been little, but he had heard the word "NO!" many times in his short life. Dada's wand was NO. Mumma's wand was NO. Mumma's icky vase was NO. Throwing his food was NO. But never before had Mumma been NO.
And Harry James Potter was not about to let his Mumma be a NO.
To communicate his utter despair at Mumma suddenly being a NO, Harry tilted his head, squeezed his eyes, opened his mouth...
And SCREAMED.
James panicked. Lily was sick, obviously so, and deserved a bit of a lie-in to feel better. She did not deserve her shrieking nine month old son to disturb her much needed rest. "What about outside, Harry? Would you like to go outside?"
Outside was not Mumma. Harry wanted Mumma.
Harry screamed louder.
Desperation seized James Potter at that moment, so he did the only thing he could think of short of caving in and heading for his wife: he grabbed a photo of their family off the mantle and held it in front of his broken-hearted son's face. "Look, Harry!" the desperate father cried. "Mumma is right here!"
Harry opened his eyes and looked at the picture his father held. That was definitely Mumma. He wasn't sure why Dada was standing beside her and also in front of him, and wasn't sure if the tiny human Mumma was holding was Harry himself or someone else, but that was certainly Harry's Mumma.
"Mumma!" he cried happily and yanked the photo from his father's hand.
Exhausted, and somewhat saddened that his son seemed so against spending any time with him, James gathered the child up and lay on the couch with him. "Yes, that's Mumma. Your mumma, Harry, and she loves you. Merlin help her, she even loves me. I have no idea why. You don't seem too fond of me. You seem to have the right idea of it, lad."
Defeated, James kept murmuring to his young son as the child studied the photo he held as if it had all the answers to every question he couldn't yet voice. Eventually, he fell asleep, still holding Harry, who fell asleep shortly after his father, still clinging to the photo of his family.
Which was how Lily Potter found her two boys several hours later, her headache gone and her fever finally abated. She smiled at the sight and quietly moved to lift the heavy tot off his sleeping father. As she did so, Harry's green eyes opened and he whimpered.
"Dada?"
"You want to stay with Dada, Harry?" Lily asked, setting the boy back down with a soft smile. "Of course you may stay with Daddy. You love him so, don't you?"
The tired tot simply grinned at his mother before settling back to sleep with his beloved father.