Harry Tate: Little Harry Bath Time

((sorry it's late, been playing Guild Wars 2, which I got for Christmas))

Chasing a four year old around the house was not the way that Eva particularly wanted to spend her evening, considering she was still a little bruised from the fight she’d been involved in earlier in the day, but if she wanted to get her adopted son to take a bath tonight it was a necessary evil.

“Need a hand?” Nale chuckled as the messy haired child darted underneath his legs and ran down the corridor, wearing only his boxer shorts.

“That would be nice.” Eva growled, pushing past her friend and following the giggling.

Nale smirked and followed, it was always entertaining to watch the immortal bargain with her son.

According to Jin the boy had actually had a bath willingly yesterday, but only because he’d been helping her in the garden and if Eva had managed to teach him anything it was ‘if you’re covered in mud, you have to wash before dinner’.

The day before yesterday it had taken the promise of an ice cream to get him to take a bath, after which the four year old had required another bath, just to get the ice cream out of all the interesting places it had managed to get. Nale had never seen anyone get ice cream in their ears before…

“Now where did he go?” Eva muttered, looking at all the open doors and starting towards the most obvious one, her son’s bedroom.

“I believe this is yours.” Orion stepped out of the study with a rather put out looking four year old in his arms, looking a little exasperated.

“You’d be right.” Eva snorted, amused by both Orion and her son, “Harry, how many times have I told you not to disturb Orion while he’s working?” She tutted at the boy, taking him from Orion and giving the huge man an apologetic look before heading back towards the bathroom.

“He wun’t working!” Harry protested.

“Wasn’t not wun’t, Harry.” Eva gently chided, “He wasn’t using his computer was he?”

“No.” Harry looked scornful for just a second, realised where she was heading and tried to squirm out of her grip.

“For…” Eva bit off what she was going to say, thoroughly sick of arguing with her son every day about the dreaded b word, but not willing to swear at a child, “Harry, remember what I told you about baths?”

“If I didn’t have a bath every day, a monster would come and eat me.” Harry nodded.

“So why won’t you have a bath?”

“Because you and Auntie Jin beat monsters up.” Harry explained patiently, in the exact tone of voice she’d often heard Jin using on her during one of her denser moments.

Ok, so while the fact Harry had seen the pair of them taking down a triad of monstrous creatures this morning, all of whom had been unlike anything Eva had seen before, and likely having originated from the home of the ‘Lord of Darkness’ that Eva had taken down on the behest of her Boss around lunch time (hence the bruising), had effectively ruined that strategy of getting Harry to bathe, it had been rather therapeutic, considering that it had been a while since Eva had been able to pound on anything without having to worry about holding back and motherhood was stressful.

“Fine, if you don’t take baths every day, I’ll stop buying chocolate milkshake.” Eva threatened.

“Uh uh.” Harry shook his head, “Auntie Jin makes the shopping list.”

“I’ll tell Auntie Jin not to put it on.” Eva warned the boy, who watched Nale pretend to sulk, and giggled, only to cause Eva to shut the bathroom door, effectively trapping in the bathroom and stopping Nale from continuing to be a bad influence.

For now at least.

“I don’t wanna bath.” Harry glowered. “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t…” The four year old trailed off at the look on his mother’s face, knowing the look all to well.

“Bath or no milkshake before bed.”

“But…” Harry sulked.

“No buts.”

“Fine.” And now Harry sounded like Nale when Jin dragged him off to help her with the shopping, as he finally got into the bath. “But it had better be a big one.”

Eva chuckled, causing her son to give her an indignant look, “You’ll get the same size milkshake as you always do. Now close your eyes, I’m gonna wash your hair.”

Harry Tate: Year 3 Train Mishaps

Harry James Tate had been asleep since they had left King’s Cross station early this morning, lulled to sleep by the combination of the movement of the train and the music that had been playing on his portable CD player, so when the train stopped and his music cut out, the thirteen year old started awake and looked around, bleary eyed, at his friends, Megan and Hermione, taking one of the buds out of his ears.

“We’ve stopped.” Hermione told him with a small frown, putting her book down and watching the young martial artist take the other bud out of his ear and look out the window, “But we’re still hours from Hogwarts.”

“My music stopped too.” Harry muttered, “I put fresh batteries in, it shouldn’t have cut out for another,” He looked at his watch, “Two hours.”

The lights cut out and the temperature suddenly dropped to around freezing.

Harry called up a ball of ki, the white energy he’d been taught to harness by his mother, if only to stop him from trying to learn it on his own, which lit the room and cast startling shadows.

“Put that out.”

Harry and Hermione turned to look at the man whose carriage they had been riding in. Professor Lupin, who had been further asleep then Harry just moments ago, had gotten to his feet and moved towards the door, waving at Harry to put out the light.

Harry was about to reabsorb his ki when a hooded creature appeared in the doorway, breath rattling, floating inches above the ground, resembling nothing more then a ragged black robe that floated along menacingly.

Instead, Harry launched the ki at the creature, who had turned towards the occupants of his carriage. The ball of energy caused the creature to explode into black streamers of goo upon contact.

The goo stuck to everything to it touched, including Harry’s jacket, which he quickly pulled off, before slowly vanishing, cleaned up by the charms in place to stop the train getting messy when students ran rampant in it.

“Soul Stealer!” Hermione hissed, already getting to her feet, shrugging off the remnants of the bad memories brought to the fore by the presence of the creature and watching her friend, knowing that his mother had done everything she could to protect him from the worst of the effects that they had on people’s minds, but knowing that Harry was still susceptible.

“I know.” Harry said, moving towards the door. “Wait here.”

“Don’t move from this carriage,” Lupin, who had reached the door moments before Harry, trying to work out what, exactly Harry had done to the Dementor, blanched slightly as a pair of Dementors floated down the hall towards the compartment from both directions.

“Professor…” Harry hissed, frustrated. He could handle a couple more Soul Stealers, but not if Lupin insisted in getting in the way.

“Expecto Patronum.” Lupin waved his wand and a burst of silvery light, which seemed to take the shape of some animal, though Harry couldn’t quite see what it was, chased the two Dementors away.

The heat was back quickly once the Dementors were gone, but the teen wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy being annoyed at Lupin. “I could have handled those Soul Stealers.” Harry growled at the Professor, who turned to consider him carefully.

“I don’t doubt you could have.” Lupin nodded, watching Harry warily. “But those Dementors were sent by the Ministry of Magic to search for Sirius Black. Destroying one of them is bad enough, but destroying three would get you into trouble. What, exactly, did you do?”

“They’re from Azkaban?” Hermione questioned, looking from Lupin to her friend, fully aware of the deal Harry’s mother had made with the Ministry to avoid clashes between the Ministry’s Aurors and Eva Tate’s little band of misfits.

“They weren’t on Azkaban, this doesn’t void my mother’s contract.” Harry waved it off, though he was certain Hermione would probably contact Eva to check.

“What did you do?” Lupin demanded of the black haired teen, whose mood had been broken by his friend’s interruption and was now fiddling with the MP3 player.

“Well, you see Professor, it’s a long story.” Harry said, not really wanting to tell it, but horribly aware that Lupin was going to get it out of him anyway.

“I will go and speak with the driver and then I will require a full story out of you, Mr…”

“Tate, Harry James Tate.” Harry replied.

“Mr Tate.” Lupin nodded. “With a little luck, we might be able to prevent you getting into trouble.”

“I doubt it.” Hermione sniggered once the Professor had left the compartment. “Since when can anyone keep you out of trouble?”

“He wouldn’t be the first to try.” Harry nodded, amusement sinking in, past the frustration.

Lupin was gone only ten minutes and the train was moving again before he got back to them. Harry, who was giving his cat a treat through the bars on the cat carrier, looked up to find the Professor watching him again. “Yes Professor?”

“The full story please, from the beginning…”

“Well, you see Professor, it all begins with my mother…”