Stranger danger
Lily sighs
It's currently 11 in the morning, and she has 12 missed calls and over 100 messages from her ex husband, James.
She was supposed to let him know when she and Harry got home. And she also told him it would probably be around 9pm last night.
Not in the mood to read all the texts, she calls him. He picks up before the first ring finishes.
"Lily" by his voice, Lily can tell he's not happy.
"Is there a reason, you didn't let me know whether you're home or not, and when I came to pick up Harry this morning, 4 hours ago by the way, no one was there?"
Shit. Lily forgot James was picking him up. They usually co-parent really well.
"Actually no. We'll talk when you're here. I want him here in 30 minutes."
James hangs up before lily could say a word. She sighs again. Her head falls back to the pillow, before she drags herself out of Pandora's bed.
Pandora stirs before opening her eyes. Lily stares for a second. Pandora is the most beautiful girl she has ever seen. Even when her hair is a little crazier than normal and she's rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
"What's happening? And what time is it?" Pandora yawns halfway through her sentence. "11 and James was supposed to pick Haz up from my place 4 hours ago. I wasn't there."
Pandora's eyes widen. Lily's never seen anyone get out of bed that fast.
Both decide on skipping a shower, there's no time for that.
Pandora pulls on a sweater with blues and purples mixed together and white jeans with heeled white boots, and pulls her curly hair into a half up half down style. Lily, once again, finds herself staring. A pretty girl just got dressed in front of her, and-
"Lils, focus, we need to go" Pandora cuts her thoughts off, before handing her a pair of blue jeans and a pink sweater.
Lily gets dressed before she's scurrying out of the room, to find Harry.
Lily find Harry playing on the kitchen floor with Luna, with Dorcas sitting at the island watching them. Barty and Evan are still asleep, and Regulus is sat on the counter with a cup of black coffee held close to his chest.
In one flail swoop, Lily gets Harry up off the floor and grabs his bag at the doorway. She checks the time. She has 12 minutes to get to James' place and hw lives 10 minutes away. She needs to go. And she needs to go now.
She walks with Pandora to her car, and the lack of cars seats draw her attention. Regulus.
Lilly swears under her breath, but as she's about to panic, Regulus comes out, dangling his car keys from his middle finger. "Let's go"
He gets in his car without waiting for a reply. Pandora announces she's not going with them, and gives Lily a kiss. She also kisses Harry's forehead before ducking back into the house.
Lily gets Harry in the car before getting in the car herself. She's barely buckled in, before the car is out the driveway, and speeding down the road. "Where do I go?" Regulus asks, nodding towards the road.
Lily types the address into the GPS and Regulus starts taking turns and shortcuts she didn't even know existed.
6 minutes later, she's getting Harry out of the car, and walking to James' front door. She knocks and he opens, with a scowl on his face.
Lily dips into the house and the second the door shuts James says a single word. But the tone of his voice makes her uncomfortable. He's mad. Like, murder someone, mad.
"explain."
Lily immediately starts talking. "I was at the lunch and we went to Pandora's place for game night. We lost track of time, and when we were done it was like 1am we were all drunk. We slept over there and I woke up at 11" she says it all in one sentence.
"So let me get this straight. You went out with a group of which you only know one person. Then you went to their house, got drunk and slept over with complete strangers? And you took Harry with you?"
Suddenly Lily realized how bad this could've gone. "They're not strangers James, I know Pandora"
"yeah. That's one person out of what? 4? 5? 6? 7? I don't even know. Lily what the fuck. Anything could have happened. You took harry with you. Setting yourself in danger is one thing, but at least your an adult. Harry is 3. Something could have happened to him. What you do with yourself is none of my business, but Harry is very much my business. And would it have killed you to text or call me to at least let me know my kid is alive?"
Lily stings hearing james' words. "my kid" hurt more than it should've. They always say our kid, so she knows James is mad.
"Look I'm sorry, can we just-"
James cuts her off. "Then you come showing up at my doorway with a random guy. Presumably one of Pandora's friends. Do you know how dangerous that is? Does none of this ring alarm bells in your head Lily? You could've gotten Harry hurt, or killed, or kidnapped. Fuck those people could be murderers and you left him unsupervised with them for how long? 10 hours. Get out Lily"
"James-"
"Get out Lily. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you, but you've set our kid in so much danger the last 20 hours that I don't even trust you in the same room with him. Get out of my fucking house."
Before Lily can scrape an answer together, James walks around her and opens the front door, and nods towards Regulus' car.
Lily takes a deep breath before walking back to Regulus. She blinks back tears before sinking into the front seat.
How could she fuck up this bad?