Christmas Dinner (Lily/James, oneshot for rebeccasm15)
A/N: Approximately 800 years ago, I promised rebeccasm15 a jily secret santa gift because she didn't get hers. Three months later, I actually finished it. Sorry, sorry, sorry, but I hope you enjoy! =)
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Christmas holidays are a time for joy, James reminds himself as things slowly progress from dismal to disastrous. He does not panic when he’s missing three separate ingredients—including the bloody Christmas ham—and has to run to the grocery to fetch them. Panic still evades when he reads ‘4’ as ‘9’ and his potatoes are lathered in double the salt, or when the carrots he’s just spent ten minutes prepping end up on the floor. The boiling water boils over, he slams his fingers in the utensils drawer, there are thirteen people coming to dinner and only eleven place settings, and still, somehow, James keeps his cool. But when the oven begins to smoke violently and still his girlfriend remains seated at the nearby kitchen table, casually sipping her cheap white wine, flipping through a magazine, and humming contently along to the wireless…well, James’s subsequent unhinging is probably rather overdue.
For Merlin’s sake, it’s a bloody fire.
“Fucking—Lily!” There is smoke. There is smoke everywhere, and James is flailing. “Don’t just bloody sit there! The—shite—the whole sodding flat’s about to explode!”
“Oh, dear.” Lily turns to the next page in her catalogue. “I do hope we have insurance.”
“Insurance? Insurance? Lily—”
“You’re a wizard, James,” she reminds him calmly. “A simple spell will solve our impending doom, I reckon.”
Spell? James blinks. Well, yes, of course, a spell. Except he hasn’t any bloody idea what kind of spell he’s got to use to make an oven quit smoking. That’s what house elves are for, isn’t it?
But James knows basic life skills. Or, most of them, in any case. Fire. How does one put out a fire? Well, with water. Yes, of course, water. Breathing quickly, James points his wand at the smoking oven, very nearly victorious. “Aguam—”
“No!” Like a sudden flash, Lily rams into him, jostling his wand which subsequently sends a burst of water flying everywhere but the oven. They are drenched—the entire kitchen is drenched. Floor, cupboards, and still-aggressively-boiling potatoes included—and the oven still smokes until Lily mutters something and the oven door closes with a definitive clap. She rounds on him, hands waving furiously.
“Are you mental?” she cries. “Water on a grease fire? Water on a grease fire? Are you actually trying to kill us all?”
“Grease fire?” James stares mutely at the oven. “That was a grease fire?”
Lily stomps back over to the kitchen table, drowning the rest of her wine in one, large swallow. “Well, considering you didn’t bother cleaning the oven after letting all that fat drip all over the place, I reckon that’s the obvious explanation, isn’t it?”
“Clean the oven?” James continues to stare at the appliance in question, marveling at its mysteries. Then he grows indignant. “You didn’t tell me I needed to clean the oven!”
“Oh, Merlin help us all.” Shoving aside her empty glass, Lily grabs the entire bottle of wine and swigs a hefty gulp straight from the neck. Apparently the situation’s just gone drastic.
James could bask in the failure of this—probably ought to, and will do, at another, more appropriate time when his pride catches up to him—but right then, drenched and bemused and still not altogether certain of how he’d gotten to this point, he is intelligent enough to realize that he is officially in over his head and frantic enough to gladly sacrifice himself on the altar of desperation. And judging from his girlfriend’s continued long pulls on the wine bottle, he may have finally cracked her, too.
“Lily,” he begins, imploringly, pleadingly. “Look at this place. Look at this wreck. I’m a wreck. And it’s Christmas! People are going to be here soon. Please, please—”
“Don’t you ‘please, please’ me,” Lily snaps, turning a vicious glare his way. “I thought you said cooking Christmas dinner was ‘no big deal’? I thought it was ‘simple’? Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Yes, simple for you,” James amends, dogging her every step as she moves towards the dining room table—still two place settings down. “You know this cooking business. You love it! You even said you were looking forward to cooking Christmas dinner, so—”
“Yes, looking forward to cooking for us, and perhaps the lads and Marlene. Not the whole sodding Order! And certainlynot with twenty-four hour’s notice!”
James cringed. “Right. That wasn’t well done of me, I admit. But—”
“So if it’s so easy, and so very simple, I don’t see why you can’t do it.”
“Lily—”
“Your potatoes are boiling over again.”
“What—oh, hell.” James dashes back into the kitchen, arriving just in time to see a healthy portion of his potatoes boiling over onto the already sopping floor. A few frantic swishes of his wand turns the burner down, but James singes his fingertips twice before he’s managed to get the wayward side dish under control. He hears Lily’s footsteps move back into the kitchen, and isn’t certain whether he’s glad of it.
Moments later, when there’s the familiar sound of their flat door opening and a cheerful call of, “Hullo!” James knows he isn’t glad.
Bloody, bloody, bloody hell.
“In here,” Lily calls, standing, James sees now, in the archway between kitchen and dining room. Her bottle of wine is still cradled against her chest like a beloved child. When Sirius arrives from the other end of the kitchen, his eyes scan over the gory scene with barely a blink.
“Hm.” Eyes narrow. “Just me, or does Christmas dinner appear to be mostly on the floor, Evans?”
Lily snorts gently. “Don’t look at me. Question the chef here.”
“Chef?” Sirius’s eyes flicker between Lily, the mess, and James, before slowly settling on James again. He groans. Loudly. “For fuck’s sake, Prongs. If I wanted a poisonous Christmas dinner, I bloody well would’ve dined at Grimmauld.”
“Shut up, Padfoot.”
“What gives, Lil? I was promised Christmas dinner!”
“And you’ll get it,” answers Lily, “from exactly the person who promised it to you.”
All the attention turns back to James. He sighs in exasperation.
“What was I supposed to do, Lil?” he asks, none-too-desperately. “It was the saddest thing you’ve ever seen, all those Order members sitting around a table talking about the plans they didn’t have for the holiday. And I just—you were already making dinner—”
“So what’s a dozen more people?” asks Lily. “With one day’s notice?"
“It was more than a day—”
“Oh, this is going to be good,” says Sirius, taking a seat at the small kitchen table. “Excellent call, Prongs. Just brill.”
“They’re all alone,” James tries again, tugging at his hair. “Alone at Christmas, Lil. I couldn’t not invite them. How could I not invite them? It just didn’t seem right!”
“Mad-Eye Moody is hardly Tiny Tim.”
“I don’t know who that it is, but I bet he’d invite Moody to Christmas dinner, too!”
“I don’t know,” says Sirius. “Not the politest houseguest, Moody. Bit cantankerous.”
“You can invite whoever you’d like to dinner,” Lily insists, crossing her arms over her chest. She has that look about her. The immovably obstinate one. “It was a lovely gesture. But when you do these things—expect these things—without so much as consulting me...well, here we are. So if expanding dinner was not such a big to-do, then you can take care of it, can’t you?”
James stares helplessly around the kitchen, at the charred oven with the undoubtedly equally charred ham, at the flooded floor and the remains of potatoes and carrots still littering the hardwood like its own kind of bizarre stew. He hasn’t even begun the casserole, nor even thought about dessert. The flat smells faintly of wet cabbage and the wireless has started to crackle, as if in protest. It is a mess of his own making, but a mess all the same. Usually he’s got some support to help mop up his messes, but judging from the way Lily smiles indulgently but mulishly from her place still in the doorway, and Sirius continues to gleefully watch the scene unfold from the table, James reckons he’s fighting this battle solo. And maybe he deserves no less. Even as he was issuing his Order-wide invitation two days ago, he’d known he was in for trouble at home. Lily was a bleeding heart, but she was stubborn and she liked her schedules. James had been banking on that former part of her personality outweighing the latter, but it looked as if the only thing bleeding would be James’s houseguests as they gorged out their own stomachs rather than attempt to devour his food. Seeing the fright that was his kitchen, he decidedly would not blame them.
There was nothing left now but starvation, or begging.
James is never above begging.
“Lily, my heart, my love—”
From inside the next room, the Floo flares.
“Hello?” Remus’s voice echoes through the flat. “Someone better come grab this ham before it ends up all over your rug, Lil!”
“My rug?” Lily shouts, dashing from the doorway.
“Ham?” James cries, following instantly behind her.
He enters his living room to find Lily levitating—oh, great, glorious Merlin—the most beautiful platter of Christmas ham James has ever seen, all beautifully golden brown sitting in a bed of healthy garnish. It’s like something he conjured from a dream, except there it is in the flesh, a literal weight his girlfriend is currently floating to rest upon their dining room table. For several seconds, James can only stare at it, mouth open, heart pounding, waiting for it to disappear. Then he turns to his mate, still standing by the fireplace.
“The side dishes are still at my flat,” Remus says to Lily, unwinding a scarf around his neck. “Didn’t want to risk Apparating with the ham, but I couldn’t Floo with everything. We’ll have to go back to get them.”
“I’ll come back with you,” Lily says, at the same time James musters out a breathless, “Side dishes?”
Remus gives him a queer look. “The ones Lily made this morning. Tough luck with the busted oven, mate. And you having invited everyone round, too.”
James begins to feel like a parrot. “Busted oven?”
“Well, it’s certainly busted now,” Lily mutters.
“What?” Remus asks.
“What?” James repeats, still in shock.
Lily rolls her eyes towards the ceiling. “Let’s go grab those sides from yours, Remus, yeah?”
Remus, clearly disinterested in sorting out whatever madness was taking place, just nods. “See you there.” Then he Apparates.
When he’s gone, James can only stare at Lily, bemused and befuddled and so filled with gratitude and indignation that he’s not quite sure what to do with it all. “You made Christmas dinner at Remus’s this morning?” he manages
Lily approaches him slowly, stopping just as she reaches his side. She places a quick kiss against his cheek.
“You’re a very sweet man, James Potter. I would expect nothing less than for you to invite an entire army over for dinner if they had nowhere else to go.” Her soft eyes narrow. “But if you ever do something like this again without talking with me first, I’m maiming you for life. Permanently. Got it?” His mouth got a quick kiss, too. “Now go clean up my kitchen.”
James grins manically. “Yes, ma’am.”
And with one last kiss, Lily’s gone.
