Chapter Text
Sirius brushed snow off of his leather jacket as he walked up the front path to the Potter's home. It was old, from his time at Hogwarts, but he still had it, even if Moony was begging him to wear something warmer. Unfortunately for his boyfriend, Sirius had absolutely no issue with suffering in the name of fashion, and so here he was, on a chilly December evening, walking to his best friend's house while trying to hide his shivering from said boyfriend. Judging from the smug look that Remus was giving him, warmly wrapped in one of his many sweaters, he was failing, but Sirius was nothing if not stubborn, and he would not admit defeat.
He stopped in front of the door. It was a relatively small house, at least compared to Potter Manor, but cozy nonetheless. The outside was painted a light blue, with white shutters and a light green door. Ivy grew across the sides of it, and there were hanging succulents in basket planters all along the windowsills. Sirius had to admit, Lily had taste. It was much better than whatever abomination mix of colors and styles James would have thrown together. While he loved his best friend, brother, and platonic soulmate to bits, Sirius could admit that interior design (and exterior design, and just design of spaces in general), was not James's strong suit.
Remus stepped forwards, regretfully pulling his hands from his pockets to ring the doorbell. Sirius could not do so because of the stack of Christmas presents obscuring his sight.
"Coming, coming!" echoed a voice from inside, slightly muffled by the thick door. There was the sound of footsteps and then the door cracked open, revealing the smiling hazel eyes and unruly hair of one James Fleamont Potter. His glasses were slightly askew, and he righted them as he pulled the door open, stepping back to allow his friends entrance. There were several rounds of hugs, before James sniffed the air and with a yelp of "my cookies!" ran off, leaving the two guests to hang up their jackets.
The inside of the house was warm, and Sirius gratefully shucked his jacket off, before hanging it in the entranceway and going into the living room. He almost tripped and fell flat on his face, though, when a streak of dark blue came zooming around the corner at him. It was his godson, cackling gleefully on his toy broomstick in his pajamas, dark blue with tiny Snitches all over them. Harry was gone within four seconds, oblivious to the almost tripping that he had caused. Harry was now five years old, and he had a frankly incredible balance on the broom for his age. The various Marauders constantly made jokes about how he would be a star seeker someday.
Dumping the presents at the foot of the tree, Sirius flopped down on the couch, only to jump back up again when the sound of a doorbell echoed through the house.
"Padfoot, can you get that for me? It should Alice and Frank." James called from the kitchen. He was wrong. It was instead, Lily and Pandora.
"Mama!" Harry cried, jumping off the toy broomstick and running into Lily's arms. Lily was practically glowing with joy as she swept her son up. He giggled when Pandora ruffled his hair, cooing about how big he had gotten since the last time she had seen him. (It was only a partial lie. Harry did grow fast, though the last time Pandora had seen him was two weeks ago, when she and Lily had announced that they were now engaged.)
James came out of the kitchen holding a hot mitt. He gave Lily a peck on the cheek and Pandora a hug before hurrying back to the kitchen. He and Lily had been married for two years before they decided, quite amicably, that it wasn't working out. They were still good friends, and Harry got to see his mother whenever he wanted. Because the house was in James's name, the couple had decided that Harry would stay with his father, but during the weekends he would go to Lily and Pandora's flat in London. Lily still visited at random times, and James was more than happy to let her have a housekey so she could see Harry whenever the fancy struck her.
It was Marauder tradition that Christmas be hosted at a different house each year. Last year, it had been Remus and Sirius's place, and this year, James had invited them all over for dinner. It was about five o'clock in the evening, just starting to get dark, and as the last few guests (Alice and Frank Longbottom, along with their son Neville, who had been stolen by Harry to play with the little broom, as well as Marlene Mckinnon) arrived, the group sat down to dinner.
James, though horrible with interior design, had talent as a chef, and Sirius was more than happy to eat several plates of the food before Marlene stood up. Everyone had finished their food, so it was time for the next part of Christmas. It had been a tradition of Euphemia and Fleamont's, back when Sirius and James wouldn't do their dishes before rushing to open presents.
"First of all, merry Christmas everyone!" she said, having caught everyone's attention. "Second. It has come to my attention that there are certain things under the tree in yonder living room that must be unwrapped. As such, I'd like to announce that this year's competition of hurriedly-clean-every-plate-or-dish-of-any-type-and-the-remainders-of-dinner-before-getting-to-the-living-room is a go!"
There was a sudden screeching of chairs and clattering of plates. Everyone grabbed their respective dishes, cups, and cutlery, before rushing towards the kitchen with them. They had to run through the living room on the way, and Remus displayed impressive balance when he literally vaulted over the back of the couch, holding his plate in one hand. (Sirius suspected a wandless stabilizing charm, which was far within Moony's capabilities, but he could prove nothing.) Marlene shoved James out of the way, causing him to drop his fork. James bent down to pick it up, offering Alice the perfect opportunity to leapfrog over his back. Frank tripped over his own feet, taking Sirius down with him, which then toppled all of the adults in the room except for Pandora, who picked her way carefully around the tangled pile of limbs and walked to the kitchen.
It took several seconds for those left behind to pick themselves up, repair their dishes, then rush to the kitchen, where quite a bit of cleaning spellwork was employed by the group before they again raced out of the room, this time with their destination being the living room. Lily was the first to leap onto the couch, giving a yell of victory, before trying to scoop up Harry and dance with him. Harry was still busy laughing at them and refused to be held, so Lily grabbed Neville instead, twirling around the room with the smaller, giggling boy.
Once everyone had settled down in various seats and spots around the living room of Potter Cottage, Pandora, Sirius, and James distributed the presents, leaving everyone with a fairly sizable pile.
On Frank's signal, they all began to unwrap their various gifts. Moony got several books, some of them quite old, and a few new, warm sweaters and a stuffed wolf. Marlene got earrings, a bottle of Sleakeazy's hair potion (a running joke between her and James) and a few nice tops. Alice was given a necklace from Frank, a warm blanket, and a book on gardening. Sirius and James got identical broomstick servicing kits as well as, for James, a stuffed deer, while Sirius pulled open the wrapping paper to reveal a shaggy black stuffed dog. Pandora got a crystal ball, courtesy of Lily, and some magical crystals. Lily got a telescope and several books on astronomy. Frank received a potted succulent and a large amount of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, which were soon passed around, memorable flavors including lizard meat (how James knew what that tasted like, no one asked), grass, frogspawn, (again, not going to ask), and Carolina Reaper Peppers. The unfortunate recipient of the last flavor was Sirius, who spent a good five minutes running ice water and milk over his tongue, eyes watering, as the others cackled hysterically in the background.
Neville got a potioneer's starting kit and another potted plant, while Harry received a little snitch that buzzed around the house and a-
"Padfoot." James gave him an exasperated look. "You do know that you have just doomed me to find little beads in every corner of my house for the rest of all eternity, right?" He asked, gesturing to Harry, who was shaking a muggle bracelet-making kit.
"Why Prongs, this is simply payback for last Christmas," Sirius grinned at his friend. "I didn't exactly enjoy scraping neon green nail polish off the ceiling. This is my revenge."
They had never figured out how the nail polish had gotten there, but they woken up on December 26 to a hangover and huge splatters of nail polish on Remus and Sirius's ceilings. It was a mystery that would forever be left unsolved.
James sighed again, resigning himself to the sheer number of beads he was going to find in odd places.
~~
It turned out that the amount of beads everywhere was a small price to pay for the joy that it brought Harry.
The little boy had begun immediately to create bracelet upon beaded bracelet. The child somehow managed to convince Pandora that the charms needed to be alive, so the little silver charms ended up being animated, complete with tiny details such as fur and eyes engraved in the metal.
The adults left Harry to play with his beads, confident that he probably wouldn't swallow them, and began talking. They talked about any multitude of subjects, ranging from Sirius's new promotion up the ranks of the Aurors to Lily and Pandora's last date to Neville's ability to string words together.
About an hour after they had left Harry to his own devices, the boy came running into the living room with handfuls of colorful plastic and silver and the biggest smile any of them had ever seen on him. The adults paused in their conversation, curiously watching as Harry went up to his mother. He untangled a string from the mess of colors in his hands and gave it to her, before promptly rushing to repeat the process with James. After James, Remus was given a string, then Sirius, then Pandora. Eventually, all the strings were gone and Harry darted back out of the living room.
They were bracelets. It turned out that Harry had spent the last hour painstakingly threading bead after bead onto the colored threads. He had put red and green on his mother's along with a charm of a little red fox, gold and royal blue on his father's, the silver deer charm a given, red, gold and a playful puppy for Sirius, green and brown with a golden crescent moon on Remus's, a firework for Marlene, a tree for Alice, silver and lavender beads with a crystal ball for Pandora, and so on. The boy had clearly done his best to match the charms and colors to their recipients and had done a fairly decent job of doing so.
They were adorable.
Eventually, every single person that Harry was around on a regular basis or trusted in some capacity had received one of the much-coveted bracelets. The Marauders quickly figured out that only those he considered family would receive them when Dumbledore and McGonagall had visited for Order business. The Order of the Pheonix had disbanded at the end of the war, but there were still several loose ends to be tied up, hence the visit. McGonagall had transformed into her Animagus to distract Harry from Dumbledore's colorful robes with moving embroidery, and the child had run off, returning about ten minutes later with a green-and-gold-beaded, cat charm bearing bracelet for the woman. She had put it on immediately. Dumbledore, for all his grandfatherly eye-twinkles and smiles, did not receive a bracelet.
~~
Harry enjoyed making bracelets. He also enjoyed his family, all of them. It made sense, then, for him to combine the two and give his family bracelets.
The Christmas that Uncle Padfoot had given him the beads had been his most favorite one yet, and when his Mama and Dad were talking with Aunt Alice and Uncle Moony and Uncle Padfoot and Mama's fiancée.
He didn't know what the word "fiancée" meant, but when Mama had said that Mom and she were fiancées now, everyone was happy, so he was happy, and Harry got to call Aunt Pandora "Mom" now, and he really didn't mind that, because now he had two Moms and a Dad. It made him wonder if Dad was going to get a fiancée too.
But, Harry thought as he slid a puppy charm onto Uncle Padfoot's bracelet, Dad's fiancée had to be a boy, because he was learning about equations in math, and he knew that the two sides were supposed to balance, so he needed to have two moms and two dads, not three moms and one dad.
But what if Dad didn't want a fiancée? Then he would be alone and lonely. And Harry was great company, he knew because his Aunts and Uncles said so, but they also said that Harry needed friends of his own age.
And if Harry needed friends, then Dad did too. And they needed to be best friends, because Mama and Mom were best friends and then they were fiancées. And Dad's new best friend needed to be a boy, because math said so.