Harry Potter: James Potter and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Title: James Potter and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: James/Lily, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black (implied-I can’t help it!), Peter Pettigrew, Professor McGonagall
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Humor
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,263
Author’s Note:
For Olivia,
I told you this was going to be a good pairing for us both-I know you like them quite a bit and I get to continue to pigheadedly insist that Marauders Era is the only thing that really exists in Harry Potter’s entire canon.
I was asked for Hurt/Comfort within the Harry Potter fandom with explicit instructions not to make the hurt too much. More specifically, “The angstiest thing in this drabble should be ‘I have a headache.’” I think I did an excellent job of being a facetious douche bag about the fact that I was denied angst. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY, ALL!
Also, since this story is for my beta, it has not been checked by anyone smarter than me. If this is extremely evident, please know it is all my fault and not at all the fault of that trusty beta of mine. Please direct your hate mail to her regardless.
Summary: James Potter is having a bad day. Lily cheers him up.
Fanfiction Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4862434/1/James_Potter_and_the_Very_Bad_Day
It is a well documented fact that there is nothing more ominous in the life of a teenage boy than to wake up an hour and thirty minutes before the alarm rings. This is especially true when the boy in question was up until 4:30 a.m. taking part in certain activities (the nature of which cannot be publicly divulged for fear of expulsion) with one Sirius Black.
What torture it was for James to wake up just early enough to not have time to fall back asleep the reader can only imagine. From the groan he released upon checking his watch, it can be inferred that his pain was not slight. Grumpily he put his pillow over his head and tried to tell himself it wasn’t true. The awful reality, however, would not be ignored and James Potter was left to decide how to spend his one hour and thirty minutes.
Suicide, he decided after some debate, was probably not the best way to spend them. Anything spectacular enough to be worthy of James Potter could not be thrown together so quickly. Waking Sirius and trying to share his unhappiness would result in a punch in the nose.
“Oh dear God-no!” he thought as it dawned upon him that there was only one thing to do. He would have to attempt to do his homework.
James learned that morning when piling the books he would need to do all the work he had neglected recently that school work really adds up when ignored. Dragging the impressive stack into the common room and plopping on the first chair he reached he was delighted to hear a calm, awake voice say “Good morning, Prongs.”
“Moony! What the devil are you doing up at this ungodly hour?”
Remus smiled warmly. “Those of us who went to bed early last night like responsible adults tend to take the morning to relax. Think. And drink hot chocolate.”
James looked around the empty common room. “Moony, you know that would make you the only responsible person in Gryffindor, right?”
“I won’t dignify that observation with a response,” Remus replied serenely taking a sip from his chocolate that he seemed to savor for a full half of a minute.
“You have a serious problem and I would like to help you work it out,” James said, longingly staring at the chocolate that Remus was making seem so attractive.
“No, I will not give you any of my chocolate. Yes, I know that makes me an addict. No, that doesn’t bother me at all.”
James grumbled. For being so cheerfully awake, Remus was markedly less awesome in the morning than would be expected. He gave his friend one last reproaching look before pulling the first book off his stack and trying to decipher his assignment.
“Moony, did you do the Potions homework for last night?”
“Of course, and Lily helped me, so I even almost understood it.”
For a brief moment, James’s frame of thought began to drift into the realm of “Lily Evans is one of God’s own angels if she was willing to help poor Remus overcome his debilitating inability to understand potions”. Coming back to the issue at hand, James looked up at Remus expectantly.
“Are you going to let me see it? Or explain this to me at least?”
“I don’t know James, are you going to stop charming my quills to splash me in the eye with ink whenever I attempt to do my work?” Remus didn’t sound upset, he was obviously savoring this revenge in the same way he had savored that sip of chocolate. James had to confess it was well played.
He suppressed a laugh recalling the prank they had pulled on Remus the night before, wishing that he hadn’t discovered it until after this fateful encounter. At least now he knew why Remus was being so distant.
“Oh! Moony! Good ol’ Moony, my pal, you wouldn’t doom Prongsie over a little prank would you?”
“Yes,” his adoring smile was infuriating.
“Would it help if I told you it was all Sirius’s idea?”
“No, and it wouldn’t surprise me, either.”
“But!”
“You should really get to work if you’re going to,” Remus said with a mocking hint of authoritativeness. “I’m off to get ready.”
James watched Remus waltz out merrily and looked down at his potions homework. He groaned for the second time that day and then, he set to work.
When his alarm went off, James was finishing the last question with a flourish. He was so bored by the assignment that he had long been contemplating introducing his eyeballs and the sharp end of his quill but his chest swelled with pride to think that it was 8 a.m. and he had already done something productive.
“Maybe,” he thought optimistically, “today won’t be so bad after all!”
Pushing through the crowded halls of Hogwarts to try to reach Transfigurations in time was always an ordeal. James had lingered in the shower and was running late. Irritated by the hold up on the stairs and not thinking clearly, James decided he would forego the trouble of waiting it out until the bottom stair and attempted to jump over the side of the staircase. He would later cite exhaustion as the cause for his graceless fall from this unintimidating distance. Whatever the reason for his clumsiness, James landed on the stone floor with just enough force to scratch most of his left arm.
“Late again, Potter,” Professor McGonagall said disapprovingly.
“I had an accident! I’ve been crippled!” He brandished his arm as proof.
“Very well, then. I’ll excuse you this time. Take a seat and don’t let Black get you anymore on my bad side. He has that look in his eyes.”
James looked to where Sirius was sitting next to Remus with an empty seat between himself and Peter for James. He really did have that look in his eyes.
“Where have you been all morning, then?” he whispered when James sat down.
“Doing homework if you can believe it.”
“James, I am disgusted at you,” Sirius said briefly before catching McGonagall’s “one more word and I’ll flay you alive” look.
“First late, and now you’re sleeping in class, Potter?”
He was jolted by the sound of McGonagall standing right over him. He had no idea when he had fallen asleep, but he had a feeling he was going to regret it.
“Ten points from Gryffindor. And detention. Today. Immediately after your last class.”
“But, Professor, we have quidditch practice today.”
“Yes, I am aware of that Potter. It is, after all, my team.”
James could not believe she would give him detention during her own team’s practice but he could clearly see that fighting on the point would have been a terrible idea.
“Right then,” he mumbled submissively.
“Class dismissed,” she said and James realized she had made class run late to humiliate him.
“Way to go, Potter,” several of his classmates hissed, annoyed that they would now be late to their next class.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” James growled at Sirius, Peter and Remus as they walked towards potions.
“She’s too scary,” Peter said.
“I was actually paying attention to her, not you,” Remus replied.
James shifted his look to Sirius who looked rather upset himself.
“I thought it would be amusing to see you get in trouble? I swear I would have done something if I’d even imagined she would give you detention during practice!”
“Sirius Black, you are an insufferable prick.”
“Oh, admit it, you would have done the same for me.”
“No! I would hav-“ Sirius never discovered what James would have done. A clumsy first year collided with him before he could finish his sentence sending James onto his arse and his potions book, actually done homework tucked inside, into a puddle of mud.
“I told you using the courtyard as a shortcut right after a storm was a bad idea,” Remus said sympathetically as he offered to help James up. James refused his help and crawled to the loose papers that had come out onto the mud.
“No! No! No! No! My homework! My beautiful, done homework! Scourgify!”
James watched the mud vanish from his papers leaving the pages blank. Completely blank. He had erased his hard work from the face of the Earth.
“Sirius, drag me up before I drown myself in this puddle.”
Sirius complied, feeling a little bad for his friend.
“Wow, you’re having a pretty bad day, huh?”
“Very observant of you!” James huffed stomping ahead of his friends to potions and leaving Sirius, Remus, and Peter looking at each other puzzlingly.
James didn’t talk to his friends during potions and went to his detention alone, hating the day a little more as each minute passed. When finally McGonagall excused him he had just hardly missed all of quidditch practice, he suspected that was not an accident.
“What are we up to tonight? It’d better be something big, I feel like torturing others,” James said as soon as he had found and sat down next to Sirius at dinner.
“Actually, I had plans with Moony tonight,” Sirius answered inhaling his meal as though he was in too much of a rush to bother enjoying it.
“Oh, what are we going to do?”
“Uhh…” Sirius looked anywhere but at James. “Actually, Prongs, we were going to…umm…study. In the library. It’ll be really boring. Wouldn’t want to make you come and be bored too! Got to go, now, I’m a little late!”
James scowled as his friend flew off to God Knows Where and wondered why he and Remus had been so dodgy lately. At any rate, he was unconvinced that they were studying half as often as Sirius said they were, but he knew when he was not invited and wondered what his two best friends were up to that he was not welcome to be privy to.
Peter waved enthusiastically and plopped down next to James. Without asking James how he was feeling, he launched into a minute-to-minute description of his day. James tried to listen and care, he really did, but after a few minutes Peter was still talking and his head was starting to pound.
“My brain hurts,” James said, excusing himself from the table and walking away from Peter mid-speech.
Once he got to the common room, he dropped exasperated into the chair he had sat in earlier that morning when he was still oblivious to how awful his day would be.
“I hate my life,” he announced to no one, thinking he was alone.
“What’s wrong then, James?”
He looked up from his hands which had been cradling his ailing head. There she stood, Lily Evans, the love of his life. He worried for a moment that he was cursed that day and that she was about to tell him something awful like “You’re a nice guy and all, but I’ve realized I’m really in love with Peter and I think we should just be friends.”
“Nothing,” he lied.
She stared back knowingly.
“Everything,” he amended.
“Want to tell me?”
“I…I woke up early this morning! And then I did my homework and it made me late to class! And I scratched my arm-and the scab-it’s turning green! Do you think it’s going to rot off? I THINK IT’S GOING TO ROT OFF. And McGonagall didn’t care! She gave me a detention! During quidditch practice! Because I fell asleep in class! But it wasn’t my fault because I woke up early!!! And then the potions homework (which I slaved over with no help from that Remus Lupin) got destroyed…and it was my fault so I couldn’t even blame anyone! And Sirius and Remus don’t want to hang out with me anymore and now-“ James choked on his emotion, letting his head sink into her resignedly-“NOW I HAVE A HEADACHE! A HEADACHE!!!!”
Lily tried not to laugh outright at the misery he had uttered this last part with but could not stifle her chuckle.
“So all this self-pity is over a headache?”
“Well, but-the other stuff, too?”
“I can crush you up some Mandrake if you want? You know I’m good with potions.”
James made a face. Lily’s potions were always effective but they also tended to taste the way Sirius’s foot smelled.
“I’d ummm…I’d rather swallow a flobberworm,” James said a bit too honestly; hoping Lily wouldn’t take it was badly as it sounded. To his relief she laughed a light, musical laugh that seemed to lift his spirits on its own.
“Well,” she said softly. “Maybe this will help.”
She bent down and kissed his temple tenderly. James’s heart beat out of all control-it was the first time she had kissed him since they had only actually been dating for a week. He suddenly forgot why he had been in a bad mood. The headache was still there but it wasn’t so bad, really, with all the other bad factors pushed into the background.
“Better?”
“I’m not sure, maybe you should try it again.”
“You’re insufferable,” she whispered tenderly into his ear and pressed another tiny kiss onto his forehead. He pulled her into his lap and kissed her gently on the lips. She made a satisfied sound and let her head lean lightly on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry you had a bad day, James.”
“What do you mean?” he answered, intoxicated by the strawberry scent of her vibrant red hair. “I had a lovely day.”
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: James/Lily, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black (implied-I can’t help it!), Peter Pettigrew, Professor McGonagall
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Humor
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,263
Author’s Note:
For Olivia,
I told you this was going to be a good pairing for us both-I know you like them quite a bit and I get to continue to pigheadedly insist that Marauders Era is the only thing that really exists in Harry Potter’s entire canon.
I was asked for Hurt/Comfort within the Harry Potter fandom with explicit instructions not to make the hurt too much. More specifically, “The angstiest thing in this drabble should be ‘I have a headache.’” I think I did an excellent job of being a facetious douche bag about the fact that I was denied angst. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY, ALL!
Also, since this story is for my beta, it has not been checked by anyone smarter than me. If this is extremely evident, please know it is all my fault and not at all the fault of that trusty beta of mine. Please direct your hate mail to her regardless.
Summary: James Potter is having a bad day. Lily cheers him up.
Fanfiction Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4862434/1/James_Potter_and_the_Very_Bad_Day
It is a well documented fact that there is nothing more ominous in the life of a teenage boy than to wake up an hour and thirty minutes before the alarm rings. This is especially true when the boy in question was up until 4:30 a.m. taking part in certain activities (the nature of which cannot be publicly divulged for fear of expulsion) with one Sirius Black.
What torture it was for James to wake up just early enough to not have time to fall back asleep the reader can only imagine. From the groan he released upon checking his watch, it can be inferred that his pain was not slight. Grumpily he put his pillow over his head and tried to tell himself it wasn’t true. The awful reality, however, would not be ignored and James Potter was left to decide how to spend his one hour and thirty minutes.
Suicide, he decided after some debate, was probably not the best way to spend them. Anything spectacular enough to be worthy of James Potter could not be thrown together so quickly. Waking Sirius and trying to share his unhappiness would result in a punch in the nose.
“Oh dear God-no!” he thought as it dawned upon him that there was only one thing to do. He would have to attempt to do his homework.
James learned that morning when piling the books he would need to do all the work he had neglected recently that school work really adds up when ignored. Dragging the impressive stack into the common room and plopping on the first chair he reached he was delighted to hear a calm, awake voice say “Good morning, Prongs.”
“Moony! What the devil are you doing up at this ungodly hour?”
Remus smiled warmly. “Those of us who went to bed early last night like responsible adults tend to take the morning to relax. Think. And drink hot chocolate.”
James looked around the empty common room. “Moony, you know that would make you the only responsible person in Gryffindor, right?”
“I won’t dignify that observation with a response,” Remus replied serenely taking a sip from his chocolate that he seemed to savor for a full half of a minute.
“You have a serious problem and I would like to help you work it out,” James said, longingly staring at the chocolate that Remus was making seem so attractive.
“No, I will not give you any of my chocolate. Yes, I know that makes me an addict. No, that doesn’t bother me at all.”
James grumbled. For being so cheerfully awake, Remus was markedly less awesome in the morning than would be expected. He gave his friend one last reproaching look before pulling the first book off his stack and trying to decipher his assignment.
“Moony, did you do the Potions homework for last night?”
“Of course, and Lily helped me, so I even almost understood it.”
For a brief moment, James’s frame of thought began to drift into the realm of “Lily Evans is one of God’s own angels if she was willing to help poor Remus overcome his debilitating inability to understand potions”. Coming back to the issue at hand, James looked up at Remus expectantly.
“Are you going to let me see it? Or explain this to me at least?”
“I don’t know James, are you going to stop charming my quills to splash me in the eye with ink whenever I attempt to do my work?” Remus didn’t sound upset, he was obviously savoring this revenge in the same way he had savored that sip of chocolate. James had to confess it was well played.
He suppressed a laugh recalling the prank they had pulled on Remus the night before, wishing that he hadn’t discovered it until after this fateful encounter. At least now he knew why Remus was being so distant.
“Oh! Moony! Good ol’ Moony, my pal, you wouldn’t doom Prongsie over a little prank would you?”
“Yes,” his adoring smile was infuriating.
“Would it help if I told you it was all Sirius’s idea?”
“No, and it wouldn’t surprise me, either.”
“But!”
“You should really get to work if you’re going to,” Remus said with a mocking hint of authoritativeness. “I’m off to get ready.”
James watched Remus waltz out merrily and looked down at his potions homework. He groaned for the second time that day and then, he set to work.
When his alarm went off, James was finishing the last question with a flourish. He was so bored by the assignment that he had long been contemplating introducing his eyeballs and the sharp end of his quill but his chest swelled with pride to think that it was 8 a.m. and he had already done something productive.
“Maybe,” he thought optimistically, “today won’t be so bad after all!”
Pushing through the crowded halls of Hogwarts to try to reach Transfigurations in time was always an ordeal. James had lingered in the shower and was running late. Irritated by the hold up on the stairs and not thinking clearly, James decided he would forego the trouble of waiting it out until the bottom stair and attempted to jump over the side of the staircase. He would later cite exhaustion as the cause for his graceless fall from this unintimidating distance. Whatever the reason for his clumsiness, James landed on the stone floor with just enough force to scratch most of his left arm.
“Late again, Potter,” Professor McGonagall said disapprovingly.
“I had an accident! I’ve been crippled!” He brandished his arm as proof.
“Very well, then. I’ll excuse you this time. Take a seat and don’t let Black get you anymore on my bad side. He has that look in his eyes.”
James looked to where Sirius was sitting next to Remus with an empty seat between himself and Peter for James. He really did have that look in his eyes.
“Where have you been all morning, then?” he whispered when James sat down.
“Doing homework if you can believe it.”
“James, I am disgusted at you,” Sirius said briefly before catching McGonagall’s “one more word and I’ll flay you alive” look.
“First late, and now you’re sleeping in class, Potter?”
He was jolted by the sound of McGonagall standing right over him. He had no idea when he had fallen asleep, but he had a feeling he was going to regret it.
“Ten points from Gryffindor. And detention. Today. Immediately after your last class.”
“But, Professor, we have quidditch practice today.”
“Yes, I am aware of that Potter. It is, after all, my team.”
James could not believe she would give him detention during her own team’s practice but he could clearly see that fighting on the point would have been a terrible idea.
“Right then,” he mumbled submissively.
“Class dismissed,” she said and James realized she had made class run late to humiliate him.
“Way to go, Potter,” several of his classmates hissed, annoyed that they would now be late to their next class.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” James growled at Sirius, Peter and Remus as they walked towards potions.
“She’s too scary,” Peter said.
“I was actually paying attention to her, not you,” Remus replied.
James shifted his look to Sirius who looked rather upset himself.
“I thought it would be amusing to see you get in trouble? I swear I would have done something if I’d even imagined she would give you detention during practice!”
“Sirius Black, you are an insufferable prick.”
“Oh, admit it, you would have done the same for me.”
“No! I would hav-“ Sirius never discovered what James would have done. A clumsy first year collided with him before he could finish his sentence sending James onto his arse and his potions book, actually done homework tucked inside, into a puddle of mud.
“I told you using the courtyard as a shortcut right after a storm was a bad idea,” Remus said sympathetically as he offered to help James up. James refused his help and crawled to the loose papers that had come out onto the mud.
“No! No! No! No! My homework! My beautiful, done homework! Scourgify!”
James watched the mud vanish from his papers leaving the pages blank. Completely blank. He had erased his hard work from the face of the Earth.
“Sirius, drag me up before I drown myself in this puddle.”
Sirius complied, feeling a little bad for his friend.
“Wow, you’re having a pretty bad day, huh?”
“Very observant of you!” James huffed stomping ahead of his friends to potions and leaving Sirius, Remus, and Peter looking at each other puzzlingly.
James didn’t talk to his friends during potions and went to his detention alone, hating the day a little more as each minute passed. When finally McGonagall excused him he had just hardly missed all of quidditch practice, he suspected that was not an accident.
“What are we up to tonight? It’d better be something big, I feel like torturing others,” James said as soon as he had found and sat down next to Sirius at dinner.
“Actually, I had plans with Moony tonight,” Sirius answered inhaling his meal as though he was in too much of a rush to bother enjoying it.
“Oh, what are we going to do?”
“Uhh…” Sirius looked anywhere but at James. “Actually, Prongs, we were going to…umm…study. In the library. It’ll be really boring. Wouldn’t want to make you come and be bored too! Got to go, now, I’m a little late!”
James scowled as his friend flew off to God Knows Where and wondered why he and Remus had been so dodgy lately. At any rate, he was unconvinced that they were studying half as often as Sirius said they were, but he knew when he was not invited and wondered what his two best friends were up to that he was not welcome to be privy to.
Peter waved enthusiastically and plopped down next to James. Without asking James how he was feeling, he launched into a minute-to-minute description of his day. James tried to listen and care, he really did, but after a few minutes Peter was still talking and his head was starting to pound.
“My brain hurts,” James said, excusing himself from the table and walking away from Peter mid-speech.
Once he got to the common room, he dropped exasperated into the chair he had sat in earlier that morning when he was still oblivious to how awful his day would be.
“I hate my life,” he announced to no one, thinking he was alone.
“What’s wrong then, James?”
He looked up from his hands which had been cradling his ailing head. There she stood, Lily Evans, the love of his life. He worried for a moment that he was cursed that day and that she was about to tell him something awful like “You’re a nice guy and all, but I’ve realized I’m really in love with Peter and I think we should just be friends.”
“Nothing,” he lied.
She stared back knowingly.
“Everything,” he amended.
“Want to tell me?”
“I…I woke up early this morning! And then I did my homework and it made me late to class! And I scratched my arm-and the scab-it’s turning green! Do you think it’s going to rot off? I THINK IT’S GOING TO ROT OFF. And McGonagall didn’t care! She gave me a detention! During quidditch practice! Because I fell asleep in class! But it wasn’t my fault because I woke up early!!! And then the potions homework (which I slaved over with no help from that Remus Lupin) got destroyed…and it was my fault so I couldn’t even blame anyone! And Sirius and Remus don’t want to hang out with me anymore and now-“ James choked on his emotion, letting his head sink into her resignedly-“NOW I HAVE A HEADACHE! A HEADACHE!!!!”
Lily tried not to laugh outright at the misery he had uttered this last part with but could not stifle her chuckle.
“So all this self-pity is over a headache?”
“Well, but-the other stuff, too?”
“I can crush you up some Mandrake if you want? You know I’m good with potions.”
James made a face. Lily’s potions were always effective but they also tended to taste the way Sirius’s foot smelled.
“I’d ummm…I’d rather swallow a flobberworm,” James said a bit too honestly; hoping Lily wouldn’t take it was badly as it sounded. To his relief she laughed a light, musical laugh that seemed to lift his spirits on its own.
“Well,” she said softly. “Maybe this will help.”
She bent down and kissed his temple tenderly. James’s heart beat out of all control-it was the first time she had kissed him since they had only actually been dating for a week. He suddenly forgot why he had been in a bad mood. The headache was still there but it wasn’t so bad, really, with all the other bad factors pushed into the background.
“Better?”
“I’m not sure, maybe you should try it again.”
“You’re insufferable,” she whispered tenderly into his ear and pressed another tiny kiss onto his forehead. He pulled her into his lap and kissed her gently on the lips. She made a satisfied sound and let her head lean lightly on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry you had a bad day, James.”
“What do you mean?” he answered, intoxicated by the strawberry scent of her vibrant red hair. “I had a lovely day.”