FLUSH! FLUSH!

"Where'd it go, Hawwy?" asked Neville, peering into the big porcelain bowl of the potty.

His friend just shrugged. "I dunno, Nev. Somewhere." He drew in a deep breath. "It's the Big Bad Potty Monster and it loves to eat you toys!" He picked up another small plastic toy Quidditch player, they were about the size of the toddler's hand, and prepared to drop it in. "Help! Help! I is about to get eaten!"

Neville grabbed another player, and shouted, "I will save you!" and made the figure flying on a broom "rescue" the other one.

Then Harry picked up the biggest plastic figure in the lot, a giant with one eye, and cried, "Fee Fi Fo Fum! I's going to crunch you and eat you bones with bread."

"Eeeww! Hawwy, why does you want to eat bones with bread?"

Harry shook his head. "Not me, Nev! The giant says that! Bones is for doggies."

"The giant is bad, wight?" Neville asked, he had a slight lisp.

"Very bad." Harry made the giant walk around the lip of the toilet, growling. "But then comes the wizard!" he took another figure, of a wizard in dark robes with a wand and made it attack the giant. "Pow! I knocks you in the head!" He looked at Neville. "C'mon, Nev. Don' you wanna fight the giant?"

Neville hesitated. He didn't really like to fight things. But Harry had invented this game and it was fun. "Bam! Take that!" he said, making his Quidditch player ram into the giant.

"Oh! I is done for!" Harry cried dramatically, he knew that line from watching cartoons and it always meant the bad monster was killed. He made several loud noises and threw the giant into the potty, where it floated face down. "Now you is in the whirlpool!"

"Hawwy, what a whirlpool?"

"It's when you do this," answered his friend, and he pulled down the handle of the potty.

FLUSH!

The giant began to swirl around and around, faster and faster, until he was sucked into the hole at the end, to end up where ever all the bad monsters and pee went. Somewhere nasty.

"Cool!" Neville cheered.

"Yay! The giant's dead and now we can have a party!" Harry clapped his hands.

All of a sudden, the potty made a strange sound.

Harry peered into it. The water wasn't there. "Uh oh."

"What happened?"

"I think . . .I broke it," he whispered. Neville gulped. Breaking things was bad.

"Will you gets in twouble?"

"Only if I can't fix it." Harry said quickly. He pressed the handle of the potty again.

Water began swirling into the bowl and he heaved a sigh of relief. It wasn't broken, just stuck.

"Hawwy! The water's comin' out!"

Sure enough, the water which was supposed to stay IN the bowl, was now sloshing and pouring out of the potty. It was getting all over the floor and their shoes.

"Hawwy! I is getting wet!"

"Run, Nev!" Harry cried, grabbing the plastic pack of figures off the tile. "Before the Potty Monster gets us!"

The two toddlers ran screaming from the bathroom just as the toilet overflowed and the bathroom filled with water.

It ran down the hallway, seeping into the rug in the den where Severus, Lily, Alice, and Remus and Sirius were sitting.

The next sound that was heard was a very irate Master Healer.

"HARRY JAMES SEVERUS!"

* * * * * *

It had started out as an ordinary Sunday, with Lily making pancakes and sausage for breakfast, and Harry watching TV in the den while Severus read the Daily Prophet. Alice and Neville had dropped in to visit, since Frank was away working a remote case up near the Scottish border, trying to catch a ring of magical thieves. Harry was delighted to have a friend over "like a big boy", though Lily did caution them not to run about too much, since Neville had a slight asthma problem and could get short of breath.

So Harry took Neville into his room instead and they played with his Hogwarts Express set and Smokey and his other stuffed animals for quite a long while. Harry had a very good imagination and he was the one who made up the different scenarios for the toys and Neville played along. They played Bank Robber, Train Crash, the Monster in the Forest, and Hospital.

Sirius and Remus showed up around lunchtime, as was usual for a Sunday, and Sirius feigned surprise to see Alice there. "Well, Moony, look who it is! Alice the Attack Dog." He grinned, using her code name among the Aurors.

"Better watch out, Black." Alice teased, waving a fist under his chin. "Get smart with me and I'll kick your arse."

"Yeah. Yeah. I've never had a woman kick my arse," Sirius chuckled. "All the chicks love me."

"Except the ones who know you too well," Alice teased.

Sirius winced. "That was cruel, Alice. You wound me to the quick." He clasped his hands dramatically to his heart and gave her huge sorrowful puppy dog eyes.

Alice exchanged glances with Lily and said, "I'd say he's just begging to get his arse kicked, wouldn't you, Lil?"

"Women!" muttered the dark-haired Auror. "Is that all you can think of, how to kick a man when he's down?"

Alice snorted, her eyes twinkling, and replied, "All men need their arse kicked once in awhile."

"Oh?" Remus said. "Do you kick Frank's arse then, Alice?"

"Everyday,"she answered, then she burst out laughing and Lily joined her.

Severus walked into the kitchen just then and Sirius said, "Women! I don't think I'll ever really understand them. Either they want to kiss you or kick you or sometimes both."

"And you're only realizing this now, Padfoot?" Severus asked. "Women aren't meant to be figured out. Their mystery is part of their charm. Take it away and they're only ordinary."

Alice eyed the lean Healer appreciatively. "Now him I'd like to kiss. How'd you get so smart, Severus?"

"He was born like that," Lily put in, giving her husband a quick peck on the cheek. "And then he married me, of course."

"What's for dinner, Lily?" asked Remus, sniffing the air. "It smells like . . .roast beef."

"Yes, it's beef Wellington with Yorkshire pudding and Alice's green bean casserole and rice pudding with cream for dessert." Lily replied.

"Sounds divine," Remus sighed happily. "I love a good roast beef. Nice and rare."

"It'll be done in another hour and a half, Wolfie," Lily told him, using her old nickname for him. "Meantime you can munch on some pretzels and chocolate."

"Sounds good to me," said the werewolf. "Sev, does that TV of yours get Quidditch?"

"Uh . . .not usually, unless I tinker a bit with it with magic. Why?"

"It's the final game of the season and the Dragons are playing the Basilisks," Moony informed him.

"I'll see what I can do."

The men retreated to the den to watch the game, assuming Sev could tune it to a magical station, leaving the women to have tea and lemon biscuits and discuss the various mishaps their sons got into and enrolling them in preschool and customers at Alice's spa, which she worked at on the weekends to supplement her part-time job as an Auror.

Alice had a wry sense of humor and could generally imitate a person so well it made Lily laugh, and after she had put the pudding in to bake along with the beef and the casserole, they too retired to the den to see part of the game.

The Dragons had just scored and Sirius was halfway off the couch, yelling about what an awesome catch that had been by the Dragons' Chaser, McGreevey, when Remus noticed an odd wet stain creeping into the den from the hallway.

The werewolf squinted, his ultrasenstive nose could smell water with a hint of chlorine in it and hear it as well, flowing swiftly from down the hallway. "Uh, Sev? Looks like you've sprung a leak somewhere."

"What?" Severus turned to stare at his friend, who was pointing to the large wet stain encroaching steadily onto the carpet. "How the hell . . .?" Then he knew what had happened, the same thing that had happened twenty other times before and he bellowed his son's name at the top of his lungs.

* * * * * *

Two little boys now had their noses to the wall in opposite corners of the kitchen, both were crying quietly, and Harry was nursing a stinging behind because this was the tenth time this week that he had flushed toys down the toilet and made it overflow. He had also earned a second smack for trying to lie his way out of it when Severus confronted him.

"What did you do, Harry?" he had demanded, upon finding the two boys inside Harry's room, looking as innocent as two baby lambs.

"Hi, Dad!" Harry looked up from his train set.

"Don't you play innocent with me, mister! I want to know what you flushed down the toilet this time. Another toothbrush? The flying Quidditch player? A sock? What was it?" he loomed over his son threateningly.

"I don't know nuffin', Dad."

"Tell me, Harry! The toilet doesn't just spontaneously overflow like a geyser. What was it?"

"I can't ‘member, Daddy," Harry hedged, edging away from his angry parent.

"Now I know you're lying." Severus growled. He picked up his son, turned him over, and gave him two quick smacks, hard enough to sting. "That's for lying to me, Mr. Potter." Harry began to wail, but Severus looked over at Neville and said quietly, "Neville, maybe you can tell me what you two flushed down the toilet?"

Neville, who was shaking, promptly said, "We was playing a game. And we flushed away a big monster and a small man. From that bag there." He pointed to Harry's bag of small plastic figures lying on the floor next to the train set.

Severus swore under his breath. "Harry, how many times must we go through this? You do not flush toys or anything else down the toilet! It's not a game! When will you learn? And then you lie to me on top of it. I'm very disappointed in you, young man. Very disappointed."

Harry began to bawl harder. He hated it when Sev was disappointed in him, for that meant he'd done something very naughty and was getting a time out. "I'm sorry, Daddy!"

"Good, but you're still getting a time out. And so are you, Neville. Five minutes. Come with me." He beckoned to the shy blond-haired boy and Neville reluctantly followed, hoping Healer Sev didn't smack him on the bottom too.

But all Severus did was put them in a corner of the kitchen, at opposite ends, and set a timer. "Don't move until I tell you."

Both boys froze and Severus left them to help clean up the soaking wet carpet, while Lily cast a spell to stop the toilet from overflowing.

His three friends were wearing half-amused and half-dismayed looks, in Alice's case. "Sev, I'm so sorry, I should have gone to check on them and see what they were doing."

"Alice, it happens, and I'm sure Harry was the instigator, since that's his new bit of mischief this month, flushing things down the toilet. This is the tenth time this week that he's done this." The Healer ran a hand through his hair exasperatedly. "I'm about ready to copy all those aunts and uncles in that story The Elephant's Child by Kipling and let you all take a turn spanking him, maybe that will get it through his stubborn little skull not to keep doing this."

"Whoa, take it easy, Sev!" Sirius said. "Isn't that a little harsh? I mean, I think I did that once when I was that age, flushed my mum's earrings or something."

"And what did Casseopia do to you?" Severus demanded. "I'm sure she didn't just pat you on the head and say, oh well, accidents happen and boys will be boys."

"Uh . . .I don't really remember, but knowing my mother . . .she probably walloped my bum," Sirius admitted. "But that's no reason to do it to Harry, Sev. He's just a little kid and all little kids get into trouble."

"You don't need to tell me that, Sirius, I know it all too well. But it's the willful disobedience that's getting to me. He knows he shouldn't do it and yet he does it anyway. It drives me bloody crazy."

"I know the feeling." Alice said sympathetically.

"Well, it wouldn't be a normal Sunday at the Snapes if some Harry-related catastrophe didn't occur," Remus remarked.

Severus shot the werewolf a dirty look. "Sure, you can be amused by this, Moony, since it isn't your house that's getting turned upside down. Maybe I ought to bring Harry over to your house and unleash him there. He'd give poor Misty the screaming horrors."

Remus blanched. "No, please. There's a reason why I never married and had kids, and it's got nothing to do with my being a werewolf. I like kids, but not living with me."

"Cause you're a neat freak, Remus. Like the Healer over there."

"Nothing wrong with that. That's my mother's influence," Remus said calmly. "In a way, we're all products of our upbringing. I daresay you're such a rebel because your parents were so straightlaced and proper, right, Siri?"

Sirius considered. "Hmm . . .I guess so, Moony. My parents always wanted me to be the perfect pureblood and frankly, I could give a damn about all that. It was bollocks."

Severus agreed silently. He had always found the pureblooded racism hard to bear, especially during his school years as a member of Slytherin. "Harry will never be made to feel wizards are superior to Muggles or vice versa. I want him to grow up with both cultures to draw on. Assuming I don't nail his hide to a wall first."

"When Nev kept digging up all my house plants and putting them outside, my mother swore it was just a phase and eventually it would stop," Alice told him. "I just had to keep my cool and not let my temper get the better of me. And she was right, but it was damn hard. Hang in there, Sev, and it'll get better."

"I really hope so, Alice. Because the last thing I want is to turn into a hard-arsed bastard like my father."

"That'll never happen, Sev," Sirius declared, softly but with utter conviction. "You're nothing like your old man."

Remus nodded in agreement. "You're a good father, Sev. Better than any of us would be, and I'm including James in that assessment."

"Right on, Moony. James would've thought it was a lark and said he was a chip off the old block and the kid would've grown up as wild and crazy as he did." Alice said.

"Charles and Anna disciplined him. I was there and I saw it plenty of times," Severus recalled. "Only it didn't really take."

"James was in a class by himself. A trickster at heart then and always," Lily said from the hallway. "But Harry's not like that. James minded getting in trouble for about five minutes or so and then he was off on the next harebrained scheme. Harry really minds when we're angry with him, Sev. I can tell. Only he's got an impulse problem. He doesn't think, he just does."

"Tell me about it." Severus checked his watch. The boys' time out was over. He returned to the kitchen and called both children to him, sitting down so he was nearly at eye level with the two standing before him, looking quite ashamed and repentant. "Harry and Neville, do you understand that what you did, playing with the toilet like that, was wrong?"

"Yes, sir." Neville said, looking down at Severus's boots. "I'm sowwy, Healer Sev. I'll newer do it again."

"I'm sorry too, Daddy." Harry added, sniffling. "I just wanted t'make the giant disappear."

"And instead you caused a flood again," Severus pointed out. "Harry, what is the potty used for?"

"Umm . . .to go pee and poop."

"Yes, not to make toys or toothbrushes or balls disappear in. Now, if you keep this up, I'm going to put a locking charm on the bathroom and from now on you'll have to ask me or your mother when you need to use it and we'll go in and watch you to make sure no more toy soldiers or whatever get flushed away."

"No! No! I can go by myself. I'm a big boy!" Harry cried, for recently he had become Mr. Independent, and wanted to try and do almost everything by himself, without help, including the potty.

"Then stop flushing toys down the drain, am I understood?"

"Yes, sir," Harry said solemnly, mimicking Neville when he addressed his father.

"All right, this is your final warning, Harry." Severus said. "You know, you ought to go to bed without supper because you were so naughty, little boy. But I don't like starving my children, so you can eat supper and then go to bed right afterwards."

Harry whined, "But Daddy, what about Nev? Is he going to go to bed too?"

"That's up to his mother."

Neville groaned, for Alice was the stricter of his parents.

"Is Mummy mad at me?" Harry asked suddenly.

"I'm sure she's very disappointed in you too. Come, let's set the table, it's time for supper."

Sev waved his wand and the dishes flew out of the cabinet and arranged themselves on the table along with the glasses. Severus allowed Harry and Neville to put the utensils on the table and then tell everyone, except for Lily, who was in charge of the food, to sit down and eat.

Alice happened to agree with Severus's decision about bed right after supper, and so it was that the two boys were washed, put in warm pajamas and then put to bed in Harry's room. Harry, who normally fought any early bedtime like the dickens, seemed to realize that he deserved his punishment, and hugged Severus and whispered. "I'm really sorry, Daddy."

"Good, scamp. Next time don't do that, all right?" Sev hugged him back. "All's forgiven. Goodnight, son."

Alice and Lily also came in to say goodnight and within five minutes both little imps were sleeping soundly, leaving the adults free to eat dessert and relax, which was how a Sunday should be, even in a wizard household.