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“Harry James Potter!” Lily Potter stopped dead in the doorway to her seventeen year old son’s bedroom. “What the hell is that?”
Harry scrabbled into the t-shirt he’d just snagged from his wardrobe and spun around to face his mother. “What is what?” he asked, brows pinched in a convincing imitation of confusion.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Harry!” Lily replied sharply. “I know what I saw.”
Quick as a flash, Harry shifted gears. “Then why are you asking?”
Lily’s eyes narrowed. “If you don’t cut the attitude, we’re going to have a serious problem here.”
“Actually, the problem is that you didn’t knock before barging into my room,” Harry shrugged. “Perhaps we ought to discuss your lack of respect for my privacy?”
“That is NOT the point, Harry!” Lily struggled to keep her temper under control. “We need to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t,” Harry told her, flatly. “I’m of age now. It’s none of your business.”
“I think you’ll find it’s very much my business while you live under my roof!”
“Really? What happened to ‘my body, my rules’?” countered Harry.
“Harry, that is enough!” she snapped back.
Unsurprisingly, the rising volume of their discussion drew James from his study. “What’s going on?” he enquired.
“Your son,” she told him, “has got himself a tattoo!”
James’s eyes widened. “Have you really? What did you get? Where is it?”
“James!” Lily admonished him, though she was silently cursing herself for not anticipating his response.
James’s hazel eyes radiated innocence. “What? I’m only showing a fatherly interest!” He almost managed not to smile as gestured towards Harry. “Well, come on then - show me!”
With a sly grin at his mother, Harry slipped the t-shirt off again and turned around, displaying an intricate line drawing of a dragon that twisted down his left shoulder blade. “It’s a Hungarian Horntail.”
“Oh Harry,” she sighed. “What on earth possessed you?”
Harry looked a bit sheepish. “Erm… Ginny said she thought it would look good.”
“Ginny said…” Lily paused as she tried to wrap her head around this new bombshell. “Harry, you went and got a tattoo because a girl told you to? Of all the idiotic, irresponsible…. James, help me out here!”
“I’m hardly in any position to criticise, am I?” laughed James, lifting his shirt to flash the tattoo that sprawled across his ribs - a bouquet of lilies entwined around their wedding date, just above Harry’s name and his date of birth.
“That’s different!” spluttered Lily. “That means something. You didn’t get it on a whim because a girl said so!”
“No,” he conceded. “But I got the first one on a whim because me and my mates got pissed one night and thought it would be a laugh, which is arguably worse.”
Harry’s eyes lit up, ever eager for stories of his father’s juvenile misbehaviour. “Really? You never told me that.”
“Yeah. The one on my arm,” James explained, referring to the words Mischief Managed that wrapped around his bicep, bordered by a trail of paw and hoof prints. “I was the same age as you are now. Me, Sirius, Remus and Peter all got the same one. Your Nanna hit the roof when she saw it.”
“I can understand why,” muttered Lily.
“I seem to remember you telling me it was sexy the first time you saw it.” James’s lips twitched with amusement and Lily felt her cheeks colour at the memory of exactly what had happened immediately after her then-boyfriend had showed her his new tattoo.
Harry, as sharp as ever, did not miss the double standard. “So you like Dad’s tattoos, but there’s something wrong with mine? You know how ridiculous that is, right?”
Lily was forced to concede that he had a point. “I’m sorry, darling,” she sighed. “It’s just that you’ll always be my baby boy, and I want to protect you. I hate to think of you doing something you’ll regret.”
“But I don’t regret it!” Harry replied, hotly. “How do you know that I ever will?”
Lily held up her hands, placating him. “I don’t. And I don’t think your father has ever regretted any of his.“
“Nope,” James confirmed.
“Then what’s the problem?” Harry hauled his t-shirt back on, clearly frustrated. “I really love it, you know. The dragon was Ginny’s idea, but I’ve wanted a tattoo for ages. I didn’t get it on a whim.”
“Harry, I think you’re perfect just as you are,” she explained, “and the idea of you changing anything about yourself feels uncomfortable to me. But I know that you’re old enough to make your own choices, and despite the impression I just gave you, I do respect that.”
Harry shuffled his feet awkwardly. “Thanks, Mum.”
“For what it’s worth, I do think that it’s a beautiful drawing.” In lieu of an olive branch, Lily held out her arms, and her son obliged her with a hug. “So. What did Ginny think?”
Pink spots formed on Harry’s cheeks. He shoved his hand through his hair, and the familiarity of the gesture, so very like his father, made Lily’s heart swell. “She… um… she liked it.”
James wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at his son. “Oh, I bet she did.”
Harry flushed an even deeper shade of pink. “Dad!”
Lily laughed. “I like that girl. She has good taste.”