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Author: Bistyboo1974 Story: Through His Mother's Eyes Rating: Young Teens Setting: Pre-HBP Status: WIP Reviews: 8 Words: 45,208
Author's Note: A portion of this chapter is about as PG-13 as things have been thus far in the story. The flashback sequence has a scene that was inspired by an article I read in this month's Parenting magazine. One sentence in the article really inspired me: Having toddlers is like living with the sex police - they're worse than my parents. That about sums it up for poor Ginny and Harry! ;-) This chapter is dedicated to those who had the desire to see James as a two-year-old... ~*~ Ginny sat in her studio, amidst three unfinished paintings and a stack of orders for several more. She glanced out of the one of the many windows and saw the new addition to the house gleaming in a stream of warm sunlight - James' playroom, which had been built on as an extension of his bedroom, jutted out into the back garden and stood parallel to Ginny's art studio. As she gazed at the new room, she couldn't help but start contemplating ideas for the mural she wanted to paint in there. She'd probably go with Quidditch as an overall theme, but which teams to paint would be the next dilemma. She knew whom she favored, at any rate, as she imagined painting a team wearing black robes with a scarlet bat displayed across each player's chest. Then Ginny's mind began to wander, back to the last time she planned a mural for James' room... *** "Isn't this the most adorable little boy's bedroom?" Ginny held up the copy of Witch Weekly she'd been perusing for her husband to see a photo of a brightly colored, magical-creatures-themed bedroom. A chipper young lad was bouncing on his Hungarian Horntail-shaped bed and smiling a little too widely, revealing the fact that his front teeth were missing. Harry lowered the sports section of the Daily Prophet and observed. "Hmm," he said and nodded. "Very adorable, especially when comparing it to the other children in the family...you know, Artie's hasn't got anything on it...and Reid's? Forget it. Not a single, adorable article in that kid's entire bedroom..." Ginny tossed a sofa cushion at him. "You're being impossible," she said teasingly. "I do try, dear," said Harry, grinning behind the page of Quidditch scores and tossing the cushion aside. "And you do succeed," said Ginny, moving to sit down on the arm of Harry's chair. She craned her neck to read the results of the Cannons/Bats match - Chudley Cannons, 20; Ballycastle Bats, 160. "Ahh, Ballycastle eked out a win I see...Ron won't be speaking to me for at least a week, though I can't see what I had to do with it." "I'm sure he'll come up with some far-fetched plot you've conjured in order to generate another loss for Chudley," Harry said jokingly. Ginny shook her head glumly and gave the sort of look a five-year-old with her hand caught in a jar of Every Flavor Beans would give. "Yeah...he'll find me out. It wasn't Ian Jefcoate, Ballycastle Bats Seeker, who won the match. It was I, Ginny Potter, devious mastermind, determined to make my brother's life miserable by taking Polyjuice Potion, thereby transforming into Seeker Jefcoate and enabling me to become the Impostor Jefcoate, thus succeeding in my evil plot to ruin said brother's life forever!" Ginny allowed a wily expression to linger for a moment before giving in to a fit of laughter. "Ron has such an overactive imagination," she said when her laughter finally died down. Harry grinned. "I dunno about that," he said, putting his paper down and pulling her onto his lap. "Exactly where were you last night, madam?" "I have an alibi, Mr. Potter," said Ginny, folding her arms haughtily. "I was having dinner with you...unless you've forgotten, in which case I'll be sending you an owl from my legal representative-" "Oh, no," said Harry as he uncrossed Ginny's arms and replaced them so that they draped over his shoulders. "It's all coming back to me now. But there are parts that are still a little foggy...maybe if you did something to help jar my memory." Ginny was tempted to jar his memory with a swat over his ridiculously charming, untidily-groomed head. The copy of Witch Weekly lay only inches away, but she resisted the impulse when faced with the more advantageous option of snogging. After all, Harry'd be in a much better mood after a good snog, and therefore more apt to give in to redecorating James' bedroom. Devious mastermind, indeed. It was highly distracting having her neck nibbled while trying to reach for Witch Weekly's annual home-makeover edition; she had intended to broach the subject of the room redo at that point but, for the moment, Ginny had forgotten what in the world she wanted it for in the first place... Your one and only son's bedroom...redecorating...domestic transformations, a little voice in the back of Ginny's mind told her. A more persistent part of her brain, however, told her, Later...this is much more gratifying than pestering Harry about room makeovers...and, after all, talking would divert him from what he's doing right now, which is quite nice actually... Harry had decided to nibble other places, and Ginny suddenly had a flashback to when she was seventeen years old and would furtively try to find places to steal kisses (and the occasional grope) from Harry, away from the prying eyes of her family (especially her mum); after all, James was just asleep in the other room, and since he'd just been upgraded from a cot to a "big boy bed," he was known to burst into the living room, totally unannounced, at any hour of the day or night, just as he pleased. Okay, Ginny told herself. I'll talk about room redecorating later...because we might not get a chance for this later... Harry had somehow managed to get himself and Ginny comfortably to the rug in front of the fireplace, and he muttered "Incendio!" before going back to that clever trick he was doing with his... But before Ginny could allow him to finish that oh-so clever trick, and before she could even say, "Smooth one, Potter!" in reply to his technique with the fireplace, they were both apprehended by the local authority of Interrupting Intimate Situations... James Sirius Potter, Toddler. "Mummy...did you fall down?" James' sleepy voice brought Ginny back to earth with one swift jolt. Ginny got to her feet quicker than a Billywig in a hurricane. "Oh, yes," she lied. "Mummy fell down and Daddy was seeing if she - if I - was okay. And I am. I'm okay. Do you need anything, love?" She hastily made certain all of her garments were in the right place, and shifted to stand in front of Harry, who was haphazardly doing up the buttons on his shirt. "I'm very firsty," said James, before letting out a ferocious yawn. Ginny knew very well what being "firsty" meant; James needed a drink, and it only seemed he got very "firsty" when she and Harry showed signs of wanting to have some Mummy/Daddy Time. "C'mon, big guy," said Harry, scooping James up in his arms and carrying him towards the kitchen. "What'll it be? We have three very fine choices...room-temperature water, chilled water or iced water." James let out a giggle. He's getting him all wound up, thought Ginny. So much for Mummy/Daddy Time. She picked up the copy of Witch Weekly and studied the template provided - patterns for dragons, griffins, hippogriffs and winged horses were included. Instructions told the "amateur design-witch/wizard" to "tap once with wand and template will increase in size, then tap twice when template has reached desired size." Ginny grabbed her wand and tapped the pattern for the Norwegian Ridgeback. The dragon pattern swelled until it would fit over half of the wall, then Ginny tapped it twice and admired it. "This'll be a cinch," Ginny said to herself. The instructions also advertised the fact that a special charm was included in the painting article (page 74), and would allow the amateur design-witch/wizard to use a technique that would cut painting time down to a mere five minutes. "What'll be a cinch?" asked Harry, returning from the kitchen with a wide-awake James in tow, but what was obvious once he looked up at the near life-size representation of Norbert in his living room. "Oh," he said simply, in answer to his own question. James whooped appreciatively at the sight of the dragon template, reaching out for it eagerly. Ginny tapped it gently with her wand, shrinking it back to its compact form. "You'll find out all about that tomorrow, young man," Ginny told James as she set the template down on top of the magazine, then she took James from Harry. "For now, it's off to bed!" * Harry had agreed straight away about doing the changes in James' bedroom, but as Ginny struggled to get the temporary sticking charm to work on the dragon template, her mind had become preoccupied with the fact that she and Harry hadn't had any real "alone time" in forever. She loved her son with all her heart, but she felt like if she didn't get Mummy/Daddy Time soon, she'd begin to forget completely what it was all about... "Stick, stick, stick!" Ginny shouted as the dragon pattern flopped to the floor. She waved her wand at it threateningly, to no avail. "Is that the incantation?" asked Harry, peeking his head around the doorway. Ginny flushed. "Er...not really...but I think the sticking charm the magazine gave is defective. I can no more get that bleeding dragon to stick to this wall than..." "Careful," scolded Harry, but with a smile. "Little ears-" Mr. Little Ears had just whizzed into his bedroom on his Junior Nimbus and was looking quizzically at the template that was lying on the floor. "What happened?" James asked as he hopped off of his tiny broomstick. "Mummy is having technical difficulties," said Harry, who was glancing at the temporary sticking charm instructions in Witch Weekly. "This doesn't seem right," he said, shaking his head. "What do you say Dad sticks his head in the fireplace and asks Auntie Hermione how this rubbish is supposed to work?" He was talking to James, but the comment was clearly intended for Ginny. "This is more her area of expertise than mine," said Ginny with a sigh. "I'm about to give up all together..." "Don't do that," Harry said. "I'll be back in a few minutes." Harry disappeared from the hallway and Ginny sat down on the carpet with a sigh. James plopped down in his mum's lap and wrapped his wonderfully soft two-year-old arms around her waist. "You know just how to make me feel better, d'you know that?" she asked as she stroked the messy mop of hair atop her son's head. James shook his head and said a dignified, "I reckon I do." He gave his mum a tighter squeeze. "What do you think about plain walls after all?" Ginny asked after a moment of consideration. "You didn't have your heart set on dragons and hippogriffs, did you?" James looked at Ginny in utter disbelief. Ginny feigned a smile. "Of course, Mummy is only kidding." She sighed again as she eyed the stubborn Ridgeback template lying uselessly on the floor. "Look who's here to translate the ancient runes in your magazine, Ginny." Ginny turned around at the sound of her husband's voice at the door. With Harry stood Hermione, her frizzy brown hair pulled sloppily into a ponytail. Her grey tee shirt (which read Arithmancer in navy blue letters on the front) wasn't tucked in, and her jeans had splotches of dried food (green peas, if Ginny was to venture a guess) all over the left leg. Been there, Ginny thought. "Harry told me all about the trouble you were having," Hermione said at once. "I'm sorry about looking like I've been through the mill - I just finished giving Reid his lunch, and Ron just went off with him to the Burrow - Reid's spending the night with your parents." Ginny felt a pang of jealousy. She wondered if her mum and dad wouldn't like two grandchildren this evening. "How'd you manage that?" asked Harry, who had probably had the same fleeting feeling of envy Ginny had. Arthur and Molly hadn't turned out to be the reliable babysitters Ginny had imagined they'd be when James was born. Now that her father had retired from work with the Ministry, her parents had become quite the world travelers - in Portugal one week, Japan the next, then off to Brazil for a fortnight... "Ron caught them at a good time," said Hermione as she picked up the now well-worn copy of Witch Weekly in one hand and a corner of the dragon template in the other. "They're due to leave for Morocco in a few days, but in the meantime they said they'd love to have Reid over..." "...and who were we to go against Mum and Dad?" Ginny turned to the door of the bedroom just in time to see Ron's lanky form stride in. "What's all this?" Ron said, looking at the templates and instructions for Quick Painting covering the majority of the flooring in the room. "How'd Ginny twist your arm to get into this, mate?" He looked at Harry with interest. Ginny blushed. She didn't recall any arm-twisting per se, but twisting in general... "That wasn't necessary," Harry said evenly, taking the edge off of Ginny's noticeable embarrassment. Hermione waved her wand at the template, murmured an incantation, and easily stuck it to the wall. "Does this look good to you?" she asked, referring to her placement of the dragon. "A little to the left...don't you think so, Harry?" Harry nodded. "I'm going to pull James' chest of drawers back in that spot" - he pointed to the right side of the wall - "so, in order for Norbert not to get covered up by a piece of furniture-" Hermione un-stuck the template and replaced it when Ginny gave her the thumbs-up. James clapped and asked for Ginny to make the dragon appear. "Not now, sweetheart," she said, patting his head. "Mummy is going to take a break." She thanked Hermione for her help and asked if she and Ron would stay for tea. * James zipped around the living room on his Junior Nimbus as his parents, aunt and uncle sat at the kitchen table, chatting and enjoying their steaming cups of wildberry tea. They had been discussing the dilemma of never getting what Hermione called Grown-Up Time. "We call it Mummy/Daddy Time in the Potter household," said Ginny, taking a sip of her tea. "Honestly, I think Reid is a highly advanced Legilimens," said Ron. "What do you mean?" asked Harry. "I mean, he reads our minds...and when our minds are on certain things, he starts wailing." Ginny couldn't help but snicker, but Hermione shot Ron a dirty look. "It's not as though we didn't expect things to change after Reid came along," said Hermione with a sniff. "But it's not as though we expected it to go from feast to famine, either," said Ron, setting his empty teacup down with a clunk. Ginny squirmed in her chair and tried not to get a visual of the feast portion of Ron's comment. Ron picked his cup up quickly and peered inside, then he showed it to Hermione. "Look here...that's a sun, that is. And if you'd finished out your career in Divination..." Hermione scoffed. "Ron, you didn't so much as earn an O.W.L. in Divination." "...you'd know that the sun is a sign that great happiness is on its way." He waggled his eyebrows in a way he clearly thought was becoming. Hermione stood up and smiled, in spite of herself. "I'd best get this one home before he really starts embarrassing me." She leaned over to hug Harry, then Ginny. "And besides, if it's date night tonight, I might consider getting out of these Mummy Clothes." Ron hugged Ginny and whispered in her ear, "Thanks for not mentioning the Quidditch scores." Ginny grinned and squeezed her brother back. "What Quidditch scores?" Hermione and Ron said their last good-byes and Disapparated with a distinct pop. "Would it be rude to owl your mum and dad to ask when we get our date night?" Ginny laughed, but thought it would be kinder if she didn't answer. If her parents were off for an excursion in Africa in a few days, Mummy/Daddy Time might be put off for... Ginny sighed deeply. For longer than she wanted to think about. * This Quick Painting should be a piece of Cauldron Cake, thought Ginny as she reread the spell carefully. She lifted her wand ceremoniously and spoke the incantation clearly. The dragon outline magically transformed. Its scales turned an inky shade and the ridges that ran along its back turned a deep, jet-black. The streams of flame it was breathing became brilliant hues of red, orange and gold, and when Ginny tapped it with her wand, the dragon breathed fire towards the ceiling again and again. Ginny would have liked to have added some other touches to the mural, aside from what was included in the other templates, but she looked at her watch and decided there just wasn't the time. She sighed regretfully and started to position the hippogriff template on the opposite wall. "Bless you, Hermione," said Ginny as the template stuck to the wall on the first attempt. The hippogriff on the wall was in a low bow, and Ginny secretly lamented the fact that she wouldn't have the time to paint a little jet-black-haired boy opposite him, bowing back. She raised her wand again, and opened her mouth to say the incantation... ...just as James' sped into the room on his Junior Nimbus. SMACK! If Ginny hadn't initially been shocked past the point of uttering a sound, her first inclination might have been to gasp in horror, but after a moment of realizing James was unharmed, her next inclination would probably have been to laugh. He looked like someone who had been Disillusioned and who was standing in front of a dappled hippogriff, except that there was no hippogriff... James looked down at his arms and yelled. "Mummy hexed me!" Harry appeared so quickly in the bedroom, he could have been shot from a cannon in the living room. Ginny had finally found her voice. "Oh, dear...I didn't hex you!" She was shaking with laughter, yet tears were running down her cheeks. "You got in the way of my painting charm...and now look at you!" James couldn't stop looking at himself. "I don't like this," said James matter-of-factly. "It doesn't hurt, does it?" asked Ginny urgently, suddenly feeling quite panicky. "Should we take him to St. Mungo's?" She rounded on Harry. "I don't think so...let's consult that sodding-" "Little ears, dear," said Ginny automatically. "That niggling magazine for an erasing spell." Harry flipped through the pages and stopped after a few seconds. "Here..." He pointed at page 76. "Here's the incantation for erasing mistakes." He raised his wand and opened his mouth to speak. "WAIT!" shrieked Ginny. Harry dropped his wand to the floor in surprise. "Merlin, you gave me a heart attack...wait for what?" "What if...what we erase James?" Ginny mumbled. James started to bawl. * Four-and-a-half hours later, the Potters arrived back from their trip to St. Mungo's. "That reception witch has it in for me," Harry said as he plopped down on the sofa. He had just come back from laying James in his bed. "Oh, you're just still sore at her from when Reid was born..." "Perhaps," said Harry, stretching lazily so that he took up the length of the sofa. He removed his glasses and sat them to rest on the end table. "Budge over," said Ginny, who lay down alongside Harry after he made room. "Well, no one can say our life is dull," she commented after they both lay in silence for a few moments. Harry chuckled. "I haven't known dull for a fair few years," he said. "But I'll taking accidentally painting our son any day over certain other alternatives." Ginny sighed. "I hear you." They lay silent for another few moments, Harry holding Ginny close. She had her hands clasped with his, and after a while she was certain he had drifted off to sleep - his breathing had become quite even. But she discovered she was wrong when he finally spoke. "D'you think this would be too forward? Dear Mr. and Mrs. Weasley...Your daughter and I are greatly in need of some alone time...Do you think it possible that you could look after your grandson the day after tomorrow so that Ginny and I could take a tumble?" Ginny laughed so hard, her sides ached. "I think we'd have to bury Mum on the spot!" said Ginny through snorts of laughter. "Honestly, Potter...you have such a way with words! 'Take a tumble!'" Several minutes later, the flames in the Potters' fireplace glowed green, and Arthur Weasley's head appeared. "Harry! Ginny! I tried to contact you lot two hours ago, then an hour ago, but no luck. I almost gave up trying..." "What is it, Dad?" asked Ginny urgently. "Is Mum okay?" "Molly's fine, dear," said Arthur. "But my knees are killing me, so I'll make this quick...your brother said something about your mother and I looking after James for a bit." "When would you like him?" chorused Ginny and Harry together. "Tomorrow evening, then?" said Arthur. "We're off to Morocco not too long after that, so..." "It's a date!" said Ginny. *** Ginny laughed out loud at the memory as she sat on her stool in front of her easel; a nearly-completed painting for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes was propped there, staring back at her, begging to be finished. "You can wait," said Ginny impishly. "I'm going to owl mum and dad to set up another date night." *** Author's Note: Just want to give thanks to Sherylyn for the beta-read. I haven't thanked her in ages, and she's a most excellent beta!
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