Chapter Text
In Harry’s new, safe, loving little world, Wednesday night was boys’ night. This meant that, while Minnie and Poppy were off having “Girls’ night” ( date night, Severus would always correct with a snort, once the two women were out of earshot), Severus, Sirius, and Remus would make dinner for them all together (and Harry could help, but only if he wanted to, and only the safe tasks, the ones that didn’t involve knives or fire or sizzling oil) followed by a night of board games or reading aloud from an age-appropriate book series.
The purpose of dinner, in the adults’ minds, was two-fold- one: for far too long, food had been a means of control over Harry, of forced labor and starvation and cruel mind games that had often ended up with him eating out of the trash or worse. So, it was very important to the three men that Harry got to experience food the way it should be- an act of devotion and an expression of their love for him, and a communal, joyful experience.
And two- it was an opportunity to share his heritage with him, and to make the foods that James would have made, if he was here. Sirius was at the stove making Euphemia amma’s famous chicken curry, the battered, heirloom masala dabba on the counter behind him (Hagrid had found it in the kitchen that night, and taken it, along with Harry. But while Harry had gone somewhere he should have never been placed, the masala dabba had no bearing in Dumbledore’s convoluted plans, and so there had been no objections to giving it to Minerva for safekeeping. It was dented from the blast, and the little spice pots inside were shaken, haldi and jeera and amchur all mixed up with dirt from what became the Potters’ final resting place, but she’d cleaned it up and kept it safe, and when Sirius had been released from Azkaban, she’d given it to him to hold for Harry, since it had been Sirius, along with James, who had inherited Mrs. Potter’s old recipes when she’d passed). Severus was opposite, cutting all of the tropical fruits that James would have fed to their son, if only he’d been here to do it. Pomona had made a corner of her greenhouse available for just that purpose, almost as soon as they’d brought Harry home, and well before he’d even woken up from the healing sleep they’d put him in magically.
Sweet, creamy sitaphal were split down the middle, the pockets of flesh pried loose and deseeded with a few careful flicks of the knife. Fat red bananas were peeled by hand ( cutting fruit, James’ amma used to say, is an act of love too sacred for magic to have any place in it), and cut into appetizing little discs to surround a pile of mango, bright and honey-rich and almost too ripe to cut neatly- only Severus’ finely-honed skill at his craft enabled him to produce neat little squares instead of a mangled lump of pulp. Pomegranate arils, freed from their pithy prisons, were sprinkled among the lot like delightful little surprises. Then it was onto the lychee nuts, whose discarded seeds were off to join those of the sitaphal in a silly little dance at the command of Remus’ wand. Harry’s bright eyes watched in rapture as he took up pre-flattened discs of dough, folding and rolling them tightly before carefully flattening them out again on the roti board, his careful movements yielding paratha far rounder than any Sirius had seen since Harry’s grandmother had made them, many years before.
He added just a pinch of Kashmiri powder to the bubbling curry, and Harry groaned.
“Aww, Pads, can’t you add a bit more than that?” he pleaded, his little moue of displeasure a mirror image of Lily’s when she was told all the things she wasn’t supposed to eat whilst pregnant.
“Sorry beta,” Sirius gently rebutted. “But if you want the spicy gongura pickle, then this is all I can add. Even with the stomach soother, too much karom will still make you feel ill,” he warned. Because while Harry’s mouth might be able to handle spicy foods with the same ease that James had, his poor stomach was still weakened by the Dursleys and had to be taken into account. He resolved to spread some particularly vicious gossip the next time he went with Arabella and Severus to a Privet Drive event, and wished it could be a vicious hex instead.
Harry, on the other hand, had already forgotten his disappointment in favor of jumping down from his step stool and wandering towards Severus, thin brown hands groping for a piece of fruit on the plate he couldn’t quite reach, what with the counter itself being at his eye level and the plate a good bit away from the edge. Severus laughed and fed him a bit of mango before pulling him gently into his side and kissing the top of his head.
Remus gathered Harry’s impressively concentric stack of uncooked parathas, bringing them over to the tawa that stood heating on the hob next to the nearly-finished curry. Each was flipped several times on each side until it began to puff, before being spread with ghee and gently scrunched to encourage maximum flakiness. Soon, all was ready, and the warm, perfectly round parathas were used to gobble up the flavorful (if not all that spicy) chicken curry as Harry regaled them with a story that Emmy had told him about a particularly obstinate mouse that had evaded her hunt for longer than usual.
“Did you tell them how I made it sssshhhhiver in the face of my majesty?” the little snake demanded of her master from her seat on his lap. Harry laughed and switched to parseltongue.
“I wasssss getting to that part,” he assured her, booping her nose with his clean left hand. “You have ssssssso little patiencccce.”
“Becaussssse I ussssssed it all on that ssssssssstupid mousssssse,” the little serpent replied to the boy’s laughing rebuke.
“You picked sssuch a sssaasssy one, Sssevy,” he said in English, his sibilants still slightly drawn out as he transitioned from one language to another. The three adults traded amused smiles but didn’t otherwise comment.
“Or perhaps,” Severus replied, with a smile on his face and in his voice and in his eyes, “she learned it from you, brat.”
Harry stuck his tongue out at the man, who rolled his eyes and ruffled his hair.
“Well,” Remus added, the scars on his face wrinkling as he also smiled widely, “at least he comes by it honestly. Both James and Lily were of a lightning-quick wit.”
“Well-met,” Sirius agreed, as Harry’s own smile grew at this new revelation about his similarity to both his parents. “Their domestics looked more like insult comic nights than anything else,” Padfoot continued. “Not that they fought very often,” he added quickly. “Seems they got it all out of their systems when we were all in school and every other word out of Lily’s mouth towards James was her calling him a toerag.”
“In all fairness, he was a toerag,” Severus defended, although there was very little heat behind the insult. “You, on the other hand, were a flat-out dunderhead.”
Sirius rolled his eyes at their old rival as Harry eagerly soaked up the information from his loved ones’ old schooldays.
“How was Pads a dunderhead?” he asked Severus, his green eyes twinkling with mischief.
“How wasn’t he a dunderhead?” Severus snorted in amusement. “The first day of potions, for starters- he forgot to take his cauldron off the heat before adding the quills for the boil cure.”
“Noooo!” Harry gasped. “Pads, you did not break the cardinal rule of the boil cure!”
“‘Fraid so, pup,” Sirius lamented, swooning backwards in fake shame. If Severus wanted to tell embarrassing stories to their kid, well- Merlin knows the man was doing him a kindness by only telling the harmless ones.
“Oh, this man broke every rule there was and then quite a few that there weren’t,” Moony laughed, putting an arm around his partner.
“Like you were any better,” Sirius rebutted fondly, gently head-butting Moony under the chin.
“I was better at not getting caught,” Remus replied, playfully swatting his cheek before kissing the same spot.
“Ewwww, you’re bein’ all mushy again,” Harry complained, making a face. “Can we go read the Hobbit now?”
“Of course, flutterbat,” Severus answered for the three of them, standing up and taking Harry’s hand. “Now, are you two going to join us, or do I need to cast an augmenti?” He asked the mutts, who rolled their eyes but pulled apart and got to their feet as they argued playfully about whose turn it was to narrate.
“We’re saints for putting up with those two,” Severus told the little boy solemnly, who giggled and then put a finger to his lips as he snuck up behind the two before hug-tackling Padfoot from the back, disrupting the argument and causing them all to roar with laughter.
“It’s my turn to read a chapter,” he asserted.
“Very well, little knight,” Sirius yielded, flopping to the floor dramatically from Harry’s ‘blow.’ “You have bested me in conquest, and thus I must yield!”
“Your lands and tithings are mine!” Harry agreed, although he wasn’t quite sure what a tithing was. It just seemed like the thing to say when you bested someone in combat.
“I’m not sure which one of them is enjoying this more,” Remus snorted, sharing a look with Severus as Harry conjured a wooden sword and waved it around, declaring himself High Lord of the Hallway Outside the Kitchen.
“You, I’d wager, since Harry wearing him out means he’ll actually sleep tonight,” Severus responded, motioning to Sirius.
“You act like I’m raising him and not married to him,” Remus huffed, but his eyes betrayed his amusement at the joke.
“What’s the difference,” Severus quipped.
Remus never got to answer, because Harry cried “Sevvy, help! He’s revolting!” As Sirius launched a tickle counterattack.
Time to help my boy, Severus thought, and the smile on his face made Sirius realize immediately that he’d made a mistake.
Harry squealed with laughter as Sirius was placed under a very strong tickling charm, rolling on the ground and begging for mercy between gasping fits of laughter. Boys nights were awesome!
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Meanwhile, Minerva and Poppy were in Poppy’s office. Miraculously, there were no students in the hospital wing that night, and so the only thing that Poppy had to worry about was keeping half an ear on the monitoring charm that would let her know if any new patients arrived. Otherwise, her attention was completely on Minerva, whose cheeks were flushed and whose skin was warm under her touch, although that was not to be attributed to sickness- rather, to an entirely different kind of ministrations under Poppy’s careful hands.
“Oh,” she huffed a strangled breath from atop Poppy’s desk, her skirts in disarray.
“A whole barrel of whisky couldn’t make a dent in your composure, but twenty minutes on my desk and you’re at a loss for words,” the mediwitch teased, although her own breathing was labored, her hands still clutching the Gryffindor’s waist.
“Oh, do shut up,” Minerva playfully thumped Poppy’s shoulder, her voice returning.
“If you insist, my dear,” Poppy replied, lifting the other woman’s skirts again. “Although I’d be careful what you wish for.”
Those were the last words either of them spoke for a long time.