Chapter Text
Harry had what one would call a “Marauder’s Spirit,” cleverly claimed by the deviously handsome and sexy Sirius Black, from his words himself.
Lilah, for her part, never pretended she was above revenge. She had once hidden every left shoe Harry owned in different cupboards around Black Cottage and then sat at breakfast eating toast as if she didn’t know what had been done. Sirius scolded both of them, but looked so proud.
Harry knew the risks and decided the payoff would be worth it.
The plan was simple and devious. Harry had spent the morning pretending to help Remus sort through a stack of old books in the sitting room while secretly waiting for Lilah to go upstairs. She had been in the kitchen with Marlene, arguing about whether she needed to fold the washing before or after lunch. She’d put in some good points, Harry would admit.
“It won’t vanish if you leave it twenty minutes,” Lilah had said. “I promised Mrs. Doringher that I’d help her bring in the cabbages from her garden. She’ll break a hip if I don’t.”
“Well,” Marlene said, sounding far too calm, “her cabbages won’t disappear if you leave them for twenty.”
Lilah rolled her eyes.
Harry had caught Sirius’s eye from behind the newspaper. Sirius had lowered the Prophet just enough to give him a look that meant now or never.
The prank itself was a charm on Lilah’s bedroom door. An enchanted bucket on Lilah's door would tripwire and cover her in slime. Nothing too gross by certain standards, but Harry should expect immediate retaliation. He could already picture the carnage, it was FABULOUS.
He crept upstairs, very, very silently. Lilah’s door was half-shut, her room neat in a way that was almost sickly. Her bed was made, her books were stacked. Her jumper was folded over the back of the chair. It was unnatural. She was unnatural.
He saw the bucket of slime that Sirius had cleverly hidden earlier. Marlene had spared a questioning glance the night before but chose to play silent devil's advocate. Harry snuck into her room with the skill of a ninja and planted it firmly on the top of her door. She was in for a - ahem - surprise.
“Don’t you fall” he whispered accusingly at the perfectly placed bucket of goodness.
**
Downstairs, Sirius gave a very loud cough.
Harry backed away from the door, tip-toed down the hallway and tried to stroll down through the corridor. Unfortunately, strolling naturally while committing a prank turned out to be harder than expected. He made it three steps before Lilah appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a basket of folded towels.
She stopped.
As did Harry.
Her eyes narrowed. “What're you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You look guilty.”
“I’m going to the loo.”
“That's opposite of where of you were heading, Harry.”
Harry glanced over his shoulder. The bathroom door sat three feet away, smug and unhelpful. How rude.
“I forgot something.”
“In the loo?”
“Yeah, you just reminded me.”
Lilah stared at him for one long second, then shifted the basket against her hip and walked past him. Harry held very still as she reached her door.
The door popped open and the bucket (on a string) dumped the gloop down from inside to on top of Lilah's head and shoulders. The fresh towels were completely covered. A burst of sound exclaimed from Lilah's chest.
Lilah froze.
Harry managed to hold his laughter for half a second. Just about. Then he lost it.
From downstairs came Sirius’s bark of laughter, followed by Remus saying, “Oh, no,”.
Lilah set the basket down very carefully.
“Harry James Potter.”
That was bad. She only used his full name when she was about to tell Marlene or get revenge or both.
“You always put that weird goop on your face” Harry said, backing away. “I thought you'd like some help.”
“You came into my room and hung a form of torture. What the bloody hell!”
“Language.” came a distant cry.
One piece of the slime dripped down from her forehead, dropping into her eyes. She hissed and shut her eye, rubbing it out. Then her expression changed. Not anger but something worse. Calculation.
Harry ran.
He made it down three stairs before he heard her bedroom door slam open behind him. There was a thud and the sound of something being pumped, repeatedly. Harry felt a sense of danger pulse through him. Whatever that sound was, it wasn't good.
Sirius, standing at the bottom of the stairs with his newspaper abandoned on the floor, looked up and grinned. “What’s she got?”
Harry twisted to look. Lilah stood at the top of the stairs with a bright red Muggle water gun gripped in both hands. She looked both victorious and vengeful. Her dark red hair tied in a messy knot and red war paint streaked twice under both her eyes.
Harry gaped. “Where'd you get the water gun?”
“Under my pillow. Of course”
“Why?”
“I live with you lot.”
Sirius clutched his chest. “That’s my girl.”
Lilah fired.
A hard stream of water hit Harry squarely in the forehead. He yelped, slipped down two stairs, grabbed the banister, and nearly took out the umbrella stand at the bottom. Sirius roared with laughter.
“Don’t just stand there!” Harry shouted, wiping water out of his eyes.
Lilah came down the stairs like a general advancing on a very small, very damp army. Harry bolted into the sitting room and threw himself behind the sofa. Water smacked into the cushions above his head.
Remus looked up from the armchair, where he had been pretending to read. “Can you two converge your path of destruction somewhere I don't have valuable reading material, please?”
“Uncle Moony, it was a harmless prank."” Harry said.
“Harry - .”
Another shot hit Remus’s book.
He closed it slowly.
Sirius made a delighted noise. “Oh, she’s done it now.”
Remus looked at the damp page, then at Lilah. His face was calm, but his eyes had gone bright in a way Harry knew too well.
“Lilah,” he said, “that was a library book.”
Lilah lowered the water gun a fraction. “I was aiming for Harry.”
“You can't always use that excuse, now can you?"”
Harry, seizing the moment, lunged across the room and grabbed the emergency water pistol Sirius had hidden in the umbrella stand after the Great Christmas Pudding Incident. He had never known why Sirius kept it there. Now, for the first time, he respected the foresight.
He pumped it twice and fired blindly over the sofa.
Lilah shrieked as water hit her sleeve.
Sirius whooped. “That’s my other child!”
From the kitchen, Marlene called, “What was that?”
“Nothing!” Sirius, Harry, and Lilah shouted together.
Marlene appeared in the doorway with a dish towel over one shoulder and suspicion already sharpened on her face. She took in Harry crouched behind the sofa, Lilah armed on the rug, Sirius reaching behind a curtain for what was almost certainly another water gun, and Remus holding a dripping book with the exhausted dignity of a man betrayed by everyone he had ever loved.
“No,” Marlene said.
Sirius paused with the second water gun half-revealed. “No what?”
“Whatever you’re about to say, do, suggest, deny, or blame on the children. No.”
Harry should have stopped. Later, he would admit that. Not to everyone, obviously, but to himself. Unfortunately, Lilah chose that exact moment to shoot him again, this time in the ear.
The cold shock made him jerk sideways, and his finger tightened on the trigger. His return shot went nowhere near Lilah. It sailed across the room and hit Marlene on the front of her blouse.
Silence crashed down.
Even the slime covering Lilah's face, started circling near the ceiling like butterflies.
Marlene looked down at the wet mark. Then she looked at Harry.
Harry lowered the water pistol. “That was an accident.”
Sirius inhaled.
Remus, without looking at him, said, “Don't laugh.”
Sirius made a strangled sound.
Marlene’s hand shot out. “Sirius.”
“What?”
"Sirius, give me the one behind the curtain.”
Sirius’s grin spread slowly. “Marlene McKinnon Black, are you entering the field?”
“I'm ending the battle, more like it..”
“Sounds like entering!”
“Sirius.”
He handed it over.
Harry had about two seconds to understand that Marlene had excellent aim. Then the room became chaos.
She hit Sirius first, because she was an equal opportunity water gun magician. Sirius staggered backward into the side table, laughing so hard he could barely defend himself. Lilah used the distraction to vault over the arm of the sofa and spray Harry down the back of his shirt. Harry twisted and fired at her, missed, and hit the fireplace. Steam puffed up with a hiss.
Remus stood, apparently deciding that saving the book required active participation in the war. He plucked Harry’s abandoned notebook he doodled in now and then from the floor, transfigured it into a narrow blue water pistol with a weary flick, and aimed at Sirius.
“Moony,” Sirius said, offended. “We had a pact.”
“It was abolished when my book got ruined.”
Remus fired.
Sirius ducked. The water struck a shelf of decorative plates behind him.
Three plates wobbled.
Everyone looked up.
“No,” Marlene said sharply.
The plates fell.
They hit the floor one after another in a bright, terrible crash. Harry flinched. Lilah’s mouth fell open. Sirius lowered his water gun as if the shattered china were a body at a crime scene.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then a slime butterfly came down and sang "He has fallen, he is free. Floatin' above all the debris."
Marlene turned very slowly toward Harry and Lilah.
Harry pointed at Sirius. “He helped.”
Lilah pointed at Harry. “He started it.”
Sirius pointed at Remus. “He broke the plates.”
Remus looked at the ceiling. “Sirius, stop acting like a child.”
Marlene’s face did something dangerous. She smirked and told everyone in a calm, calculated voice.
“Kitchen,” she said.
No one argued.
They filed in soaked and dripping, water squelching in Harry’s trainers, Lilah’s hair plastered to her cheek, Sirius’s shirt clinging to one shoulder, and Remus still holding the damp book like evidence. Marlene followed them with all three water guns under one arm.
At the kitchen table, she set them down in a row.
“Explain.”
Sirius opened his mouth.
“Not you.”
He closed it.
Harry glanced at Lilah. Lilah glanced back. She looked furious, but there was a twitch at the corner of her mouth she was clearly fighting. Harry’s ear was still wet. His socks were uncomfortable. The butterflies had followed them into the kitchen and were now hovering uncertainly near the light fixture.
“I put a bucket of slime on her door to see what would happen,” Harry said.
Marlene stared at him. “Why?”
“It was funny.”
“It was,” Sirius murmured.
Marlene pointed at him without looking. “You are very close to sleeping in the shed.”
Sirius leaned back in his chair and wisely became fascinated with the ceiling.
Lilah folded her arms. “I defended myself.”
“With a water gun from under your pillow,” Marlene said.
“Yes.”
Marlene paused. “Why was there a water gun under your pillow?”
Lilah’s expression turned stubborn. “Because Harry and Sirius live here. I have to invest in protection.”
Remus coughed into his fist.
Marlene pressed her lips together, and for one wild second Harry thought she might laugh. She didn’t. She looked toward the sitting room, where the broken dishes still lay scattered across the floor, then back at the four damp idiots in her kitchen.
“All of you are cleaning that up. By hand. No magic.”
Sirius sat up. “Marlene, love, broken china—”
“By hand,” she repeated. “Carefully. Since apparently everyone in this house has the judgment of an overexcited kneazle.”
Harry slumped. Lilah, still trying not to smile, nudged his wet trainer with hers under the table.
“The slime turned into butterflies, really?,” she muttered.
“Your aim’s rubbish,” Harry muttered back.
“I hit you square in the forehead.”
“And Uncle Moony's book.”
“That was still your fault.”
Remus sighed. “Somehow, it always is.”
Marlene gathered the water guns and put them on top of the highest cabinet with the grim precision of someone confiscating contraband. Sirius watched mournfully.
“Those are family heirlooms.”
“You bought them from the supermarket for fifteen pounds, Sirius. It was a whole date night, remember?”
“And one you will fondly remember..”
She gave him one look, and he reached for the dustpan before she could say his name.
By the time the dishes were cleaned, the floor mopped, the sofa cushions dragged out to dry, and the last soggy butterfly peeled from the lampshade, the worst of Marlene’s temper had cooled into muttering. Harry and Lilah were sent upstairs to change. Halfway up, she flicked water from the end of her hair at him.
Harry wiped his cheek. “Truce?”
Lilah considered him, eyes still sharp, mouth finally giving way to a grin.
“For tonight.”
“So no truce then....”
“No,” she said, stepping onto the landing. “It’s a warning.”
Downstairs, Sirius laughed and Marlene snapped, “I can still hear you encouraging them.”
Harry looked at Lilah. Lilah looked at Harry.
Both of them ran for their rooms before Marlene could find another dish.