Harry sat a little closer to James than he usually would during mealtimes, but otherwise he didn't show any signs of discomfort like he had the first time they ate in the Great Hall together. He and Harry ended up having to eat alone later as Harry had been afraid to eat until after everyone else had, but the food obviously disappeared when people had stopped eating. Harry wasn't doing that though, but James didn't know if it was because he had gotten past that fear, or if he wasn't too scared around Lily.
"So what exactly do you do with the Slug Club?" James asked, putting on an odd voice that made Lily's lips tremble from trying not to laugh.
"It depends, the parties when we're allowed to bring plus ones are pretty tame, just drinks and some guests he brings in. For some reason the drinks are set up as teachers or special guests, Slug Club members, and Slug guests, I think the one for teachers and special guests is alcoholic because they're all adults, sometimes there are some vampires, so those times there's usually blood for them." Lily said. The vampires who usually came did not seem to like drinking the blood provided and tried to drink from the students, though they were never left alone long enough to manage to.
"Why do the club members and their guests have different drinks?" James asked, though as his eyes flicked to Harry he realised this could well be the kind of conversation to not have in front of a child.
"Who knows? I usually drink from the one for guests though." Lily said with a shrug.
Harry was playing with some of the wild flowers that were growing in the lawn. The grounds were only kept far enough to prevent any dangerous plants growing where students were encouraged to be, and that it never got too long, but otherwise the plants could do as they wanted.
"Hey baby, what'cha doing?" James asked, moving so he was lounging on his stomach, close to Harry.
Harry jumped a little, lowering his hands with the flowers in, but not hiding his hands as he might have done before.
"The flowers are pretty."
"Can I see them?" James asked, shuffling closer again.
Harry looked away from James, but held out the flowers. There were a lot of daisies, some pure white, others with pink or purple tips to the petals. Harry also had a few small blue flowers that had thin, white spines that could scratch but weren't very strong. Even though none of the plants were supposed to grow tall, there were spindly looking, small yellow flowers that always seemed to climb to about Harry's height that Harry had also picked. Harry had picked a few small, purple flowers amongst them too.
"These are so pretty, Harry," James said, giving them back to him. "Do you have anything you want to do with them?"
"I can teach you how to make daisy chains if you want." Lily offered with a smile.
Harry didn't verbally respond, but held onto the flowers more tightly and looked away from her. Lily frowned a little at the rejection of her offer, it's not like she was acting like Harry had done anything wrong. She guessed he had no reason to trust her, he didn't even know she's his mother.
"Do you want them to be a bouquet, crown, necklace, or something else?" James asked, his eyes kind and smiling.
"I just think they're pretty..." Harry mumbled, looking at the flowers and trying not to fiddle with his fingers as it could damage the flowers he held.
"There are spells that can preserve them if you want to keep them forever." Lily leant forwards, though she still left rather a lot of space between her and Harry.
Though he flinched away, Harry seemed to brighten up at that. He was the one who had picked them, but he didn't want them to die.
Picking wildflowers Petunia didn't want in the garden had become a habit of his, they were going to be removed from the garden anyway. They never survived long, sometimes he was caught, but while they were still living the small amounts of brightness and colour they brought into his cupboard made his loneliness a little more bearable. Of course, he didn't need to do that anymore. Harry was with James now, who was so nice Harry sometimes felt like he didn't deserve it. The room they slept in was large and bright, and there were flowers in the common room that changed as soon as they started to wilt. Harry still liked wild flowers though, the fact that they're small made him like them more than the large ones in the common room.
"Thank you." Harry said, nodding, though he still kept the flowers close to him rather than hand them over to her.
"Can I have the flowers to preserve them?" Lily asked, still smiling, though now it looked a little strained.
It seemed like it was much harder for Lily to deal with Harry than it was for James. Harry might be guarded, more so than he was with James, but maybe Lily was just worse with kids than others. Of course she found him cute, there was probably nobody who didn't, but finding a child cute doesn't make them easy to deal with.
"I promise you will get the flowers back, but Lily is better at the spell than me. If I do it they'll probably end up on fire." James laughed a little awkwardly, it was one of the only spells he failed so badly at.
"I'll just make it so they will never wilt. I like flowers too, I have a lot of daisy chains in my room that I used to make with my sister." Lily said, holding her hand out for the flowers.
Harry made a small noise of discomfort, looking between Lily and the flowers. He clearly didn't look entirely sure, but there were a lot of flowers around them that he could pick if Lily didn't give him the flowers back. He didn't want to be mocked like he was whenever Vernon saw him admiring the flowers or butterflies in the garden, or screamed at like Petunia did when he picked flowers or looked at any insect that wasn't a butterfly.
Harry did eventually hand over the flowers, Lily smiled more brightly in response. She pointed her wand at the flowers, and there was a small but bright flash and afterwards there was no visible change to them.
After taking back the flowers, though, Harry realised that they had changed a little in texture. They were slightly firmer and felt almost like plastic, like the pressed flowers he had gotten once after they were deemed failed. They mostly felt the same though.
"What do you say now?" James asked a little pointedly, though his voice was still gentle.
"Thank you." Harry said, not fully looking at Lily.
She was a beautiful person, that's true, but she looked very like Petunia. Her face was the same, only younger, and they spoke in similar ways. Harry was sure he would be able to tell if she was about to yell too. Really the only difference between Petunia and Lily was hair colour. Lily had beautiful ginger hair that was on the edge of red, and Petunia was blonde. Their hair was even the same texture; mostly straight with a strong curl at the bottom, though it got frizzy when damp.
"You're welcome, feel free to tell me if you have any other flowers you want preserving. I love wild flowers." Lily said with a bright smile.
"I like them too." Harry said quietly.
"If you ever want to make a daisy chain then please tell me, I love making them, so I would be happy to teach you." Lily brushed her hair out of her face after a strong gust of wind blew through their little picnic.
Harry yelped and ran off after the napkins that had also blown away, leaving James and Lily alone together. It wasn't long enough to continue talking about the Slug Club, and Harry was still close so would be able to hear anything. He was surprisingly fast for how little his legs were, James could only hope that wasn't a bad sign.
"He was fine looking at me in Potions, so why not today?" Lily asked, looking a little sad.
"In Potions the lighting isn't good, so maybe he didn't see you clearly? I don't know everything, but he was mistreated until he came here. Do you happen to look like your sister?" James asked.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Lily grew cold in a second, her face hardening at James' question.
"We don't know what happens in the future, maybe something happens to make your sister hateful. Or maybe there's some other reason, but your sister is called Petunia and that's the person he said told him about our deaths was Petunia. I don't think she was honest about our deaths, but I can't say what the truth was." James pushed himself up onto his knees as he saw Harry stumble, but he caught himself before he fell.
"Yes, I look like Petunia. No, she doesn't like magic. No, I don't see her hurting my child or anyone else's." Lily said, looking down at her hands, her nails short with many cuts around them.
"Like I said, there's any number of things that could have happened. Maybe there was something that soured her more, maybe she had no choice. It doesn't matter now. When we can my parents and I will get him mind healing." James said.
If he was ever forced to choose between Harry and Lily the choice would be easy; Harry. He absolutely still liked Lily, but Harry is his child, and a very shy and hurt one. Lily would always be able to go to him for help if she needed it, he would always be someone she could rely on, but Harry had to come first.
"I got them all." Harry huffed, running back with all the napkins wrinkled in his arms, most of them were at least grass stained though, and a few were muddy.
"Well done Harry. Thank you." James smiled, rubbing Harry's head making his hair that was so much like James' even messier.
Harry giggled slightly, smiling brightly about the complement. It seemed he had only gone to collect the napkins to get James to praise him. Lily knew that Harry could get praise from James easily, but she guessed it wasn't bad to praise him for even small things he did well.
"Mr Potter?" Professor Sprout came towards the small group.
"Professor?" James asked, looking up at her, gently holding onto Harry's hand as the boy approached him slightly.
"Can we talk in private? This won't take long, I promise." Professor Sprout looked at Harry who looked a little scared.
"Harry, if you don't want to be close to Lily then you can fly, just don't go fast, high, or do flips. Okay?" James phrased it as a question, but it as long as Harry was on his broom then it was a command.
"How high is too high?" Lily asked as James started to walk away.
"If you have to stand up to reach him or higher than that it's too high. If you can't keep up with him comfortably then it's too fast, and I think it's obvious with flips." James said over his shoulder as he walked to the greenhouses with Professor Sprout.
"Do you want to keep eating or start flying?" Lily asked, though Harry was already going for his toy broom. "Okay, just stay close, alright."
-----
"What do you need, Professor?" James asked, feeling a little antsy as he stood by the door, wanting to get back to Harry.
"Harry's homework. Do you know what this is?" Professor Sprout asked, holding up the drawing in question, it was rather difficult to make out.
"You asked him to draw his favourite plant, right? I know that he wouldn't do something else. He is only four so he definitely didn't draw anything inappropriate deliberately." Honestly James couldn't see anything inappropriate in the drawing, but if he was being taken aside to talk about it then he should apologise and tell Harry not to draw it.
"No, it's nothing like that, no apology needed. I can't be entirely sure, as you said Harry is a 4 year old, but I think I know what he drew." Professor Sprout put the drawing down and turned to rootle through the draws.
"Is it something this important?" James asked.
He knew Harry needed to learn to be more independent, but he was still a young child and should be allowed to learn that on his own terms. If James was just being asked what plant Harry drew then first Harry would be a better person to ask and secondly did it even matter? It was homework he was given because he wanted to be seen as important and take part in the lessons. It wasn't related to the lesson or anything but the subject in general.
"Yes. I believe he drew this," Professor Sprout whirled around holding up something that looked rather like a mushroom, the top being red and bumpy, the bumps tall and chunky, though they still somehow seemed to be waving like in the wind. It had dirt on the bottom, so James assumed that it was freshly pulled up and hadn't been washed. "It's commonly called a Potion Mushroom, the colour of the top varies, but red or blue are the most common."
"I know they're common potions ingredients, especially in older potions, what about them?" James asked. Honestly he wasn't overly enthusiastic about Herbology, so he didn't look much into plants like these.
"They're treated like plants and act like plants too, but they're not," Professor Sprout put it back down on the desk. "They absorb magic and use that and algae on them to survive. Because of this they only grow in highly magic dense areas for them to be able to survive."
"Yeah, Harry might have drawn that, or a mushroom. I don't see the big deal either way." James shrugged.
"If it's mushrooms then I'm worrying about nothing. If I'm right, though, then how could Harry have seen them before? When I say highly concentrated magical areas, I mean you get a maximum of 10 in average sized wizard villages." Professor Sprout explained.
"Harry has extremely strong magic, he could have grown some purely from his own magic." James seemed to be trying to convince himself more than Sprout. They were hardly rare in the sense that they grew quickly and frequently, but it's true they took rather a lot of searching to find.
"Just take this and ask if it's what he drew. Be careful not to break it, that releases the magic it stores." Professor Sprout grabbed the Potion Mushroom and put it in James' hands. "Thank you for your time."
((A/N: The image at the top is the Potion Mushroom Professor Sprout was showing James, the image below is how it looks if you can see magic.
It's loosely based on coral and aesthetically on mushrooms. Have a nice day/week. I love you all.))