Jily Oneshots (pt2)

Peaches and Pick-up Lines

by MagicGirlinAMuggleWorld

The morning began like many other summer Saturday mornings, with Lily and Remus meeting at their favorite coffee shop at eight before heading to the farmer's market for fresh veggies and people watching. This particular Saturday, Remus was complaining to Lily about the size of the strawberries in one particular stall ("You can't tell me these aren't genetically modified, look at them!") when he felt a gentle tug on his trousers, near his knee. He looked down and found a tiny toddler with thick black hair gripping the denim leg of his jeans in one hand and pointing at a display of peaches with the other.

"My apples, Papa?" he asked hopefully. "Mine?"

"Those are peaches," Remus corrected gently, reflexively, just before he panicked.

"Fucking hell!" He hopped backwards, breaking the child's grip on his jeans. "Lily!"

...

"Sirius, where's Harry?"

James asked the question with the kind of practiced calm he often used when seeking information from his six- and seven-year-old students. It was a gentle voice, one that inspired confidence and encouraged honesty instead of whining and fibs and finger-pointing. Only one who knew him very well would be able to tell James was about four seconds away from screaming bloody murder.

Sirius knew James very well. "You were holding him last," he said, his tone accusatory only because he, too, was on the verge of panic. "You had him on your shoulders, and then you put him down to hide from Marlene—"

"I wasn't hiding, I had to tie my shoe!"

He had been hiding, but that was irrelevant. Marlene was well-meaning, but she'd been trying to play matchmaker ever since Harry's mother had up and moved to New York to chase her Broadway dreams, James and Harry be damned. That was six months ago, and, honestly, James didn't want to be matched with anyone right now. He just wanted to teach his primary schoolers and play football on weekends and let his parents and Sirius spoil his precious son absolutely rotten.

His son. His son who was missing.

James' attention snapped back to the present. And that's when the screaming began. "HARRY!"

...

Lily turned away from the strawberries she'd been considering at the same moment the child looked up and realized that Remus was not, in fact, his papa. The little one's green eyes went wide and he stumbled backwards, lower lip quivering.

"Oh!" Lily was squatting at his side immediately, holding out a cautious hand to steady him. "It's all right, love, it's all right. Now, who do you belong to?"

The child began shaking his head violently. "Ohhh, nononono," he said over and over, spinning in a clumsy circle as his eyes scanned nearby faces for his father. Not finding him, he settled for backing away from Lily, still shaking his head. Lily reached for him, but he wrenched his chubby arm away and cried out, "Papa!"

"Lil, maybe we should let him go," Remus said nervously. "It looks like you're trying to kidnap him."

"Remus, why would you say that?" Lily hissed. She glanced around to see if anyone looked prepared to call the police. "We can't just let him go, we can't leave a two-year-old alone in the farmer's market! Someone must be looking for him. We should keep him here until they come back."

The tot let out an ear-splitting wail, and Lily winced and gave Remus a pointed look. "If nothing else, I'm sure that got their attention."

...

James and Sirius froze, each honing in on Harry's cries with animal-like precision, then took off running in the direction of the sound. Thankfully, they found him almost immediately, his tiny fists pressed to his eyes and his mouth wide open in a scream, standing just on the other side of the stall of fresh fruit they'd been browsing when Marlene approached. A red-haired woman in a sundress and cowboy boots was squatting next to him, gamely trying to look in control, and a lanky man with brown hair stood behind her, gamely trying to look uninvolved.