I didn't do it! *Meri & Ethan*

Finn was so bored. His sisters were in school, and none of his friends from school lived on his street. Both of his parents were working and for some reason, the babysitter hadn't shown up yet. He was alright with that, though. She was mean and she was always talking about his dad and how much she wanted to sleep with him. Whatever that meant. His mum was the only one who slept in his dad's bed. Unless he had a nightmare or something. And he would never admit to anything like that.

He was playing with a large baseball he had found on the playground at school. He didn't have many muggle toys, mainly because he had not ever been very interested. But it was actually quite fun to throw it back and forth against the ceiling of his bedroom. That was until he lost control and it actually went through his window and into the backyard.

"Uh oh..."

He jumped up and looked through the window. The offending object was in his mother's flower bed, staring back at him. His cheeks flushed and he tried to figure out exactly what to do. He was nervous about how they would react, so he decided to just try and hide it. He ran to get the small broom for the small pieces that were on his windowsill. And when that was clean, he went out to pick up the bigger pieces that sat among the flowers. Once it was all clean, he closed his blinds so they wouldn't see the large hole in the glass. He would ask Zoe to fix it the next time she was home.

As soon as he thought he was home free, he heard the front door opening, announcing the arrival of one or both of his parents. He sat on his bed and relaxed, until he looked over toward the window and saw another piece of gleaming glass. He jumped up and ran over to the tiny piece and he picked it up to put it in the rubbish bin. But the horrid thing bit him! He gasped and looked down at the blood that was dripping from his finger. He grabbed a tissue, but the bedroom door opened before he could fix it completely.

"Uh...hi," he said blushing.

Merideth finished her day at St. Mungo's and smiled. All of her patients were doing well, and two of them had had their babies overnight. She'd been present at the delivery of one, but not the second. They had been born within moments of each other and she had not had time to get to the second birth. But she trusted her colleagues whole-heartedly. Both babies were healthy and were scheduled to go home with their parents that afternoon.

She closed the file that she was working on and stood from her desk. It had been a long day, nearly fourteen hours this time. She just wanted to get home and see her family. She missed them horribly when she was putting in long hours at the hospital. She loved her career, but she loved her family just as much, and was looking forward to seeing her only son as soon as she walked in the front door.

She grabbed her bag and jacket, turned off the light and locked the door to her office as she was leaving it. She said good-bye to a few of the nurses as she passed them on her way out.

On the street, she looked around to see if there was anywhere she could Apparate home without being seen. She knew it wasn't safe to use the same place everytime, someone might catch on to the fact that she had a set routine for when she appeared and disappeared from the same area.

She went around the corner of the building and was gone, on her way home. She arrived in a secluded part of their front lawn and made her way to the house, a sense of fatigue starting to creep over her.

She didn't see anyone inside, and figured that Finn must be upstairs in his room. She kicked off her shoes on the way up the stairs, tossing them into her own room before continuing to Finn's. She knocked softly on her baby boy's room and opened the door, smiling when he said hi to her, but the smile didn't last long. She saw the blood running down her son's finger and hurried over to him, taking hold of his hand and wrapping the tissue he was holding around it to clean up some of the blood to see how bad it was.

"Finn, what happened?!"

Finn felt tears come to his eyes as his finger began to pulse in pain a little more. He stood next to her and rested his head against her chest. He didn't really want to lie to her, but he REALLY didn't want to be in trouble for his window. So he took a deep breath and looked into her eyes.

"It was a vampire, mummy. He...He came in and wanted to turn me into a vampire too. But I fought him and got him to run away. But he bit my finger first. See?"

He held up his finger to show her the 'bite' and he sniffled, hoping to add a little bit more sympathy to his predicament. He had gotten in trouble for lying before, but maybe this time they would believe it. He knew about Ava's werewolf bite, even though he had been sworn to secrecy. Maybe if they believed in werewolves, they would also believe in vampires.

"But I'm okay," he said softly, "I think I scared him away."

Merideth tended to her son's finger, healing the small cut that had been on it. She listened to his tall tale about a vampire having bitten him on his finger. This child didn't have the slightest idea how to lie, and she thought it better not to have anyone teach him. It was better that he wasn't able to do it well. It made it easier to weed it out when he wasn't telling the truth, and then to get the real story out of him.

"Finn, there are two problems with your story. One- vampires are nocturnal. They only come out at night, it's not quite that, yet. Two- a vampire wouldn't have bitten your finger, he would have gone for your neck." She pulled her only son onto her lap.

"Now why don't you tell me the real story, and we'll get that out of the way?" She smoothed his hair back from his face and looked him in the eye. If she could get the truth out of him, and find out what had really happened to his finger, then maybe he'd explain why it was that his blind was blowing gently when there was no breeze in the room?

She moved Finn off her lap and went to the window, pulling the blind. What she saw made her jaw drop.

"Finn Spencer! What in the name of Merlin happened to your window?!"

Finn's eyes widened when she revealed his now broken window, and he briefly thought of running. That would clearly be the safest option for now. But he knew his mother could easily bring him back with her magic, or call his father. And he most definitely did not want to be talking to his father about this. So maybe running wasn't very safe. And his vampire story hadn't worked, so he had to think up something new for the time being. He gulped and looked up into her face.

"Well, you see, I..um..."

Why couldn't he think?! It was because he was injured! The cut on his finger was making him weak, and he could no longer make up any proper story to convince her of his innocence! He was so in for it. Unless...

"I didn't do it! Emma did it with her wand! I told her to fix it, but she just punched me in the arm and left. I tried to fix it...that's where the cut came from."

He knew it was mean, and that Emma would kill him if she knew he had blamed her for something she hadn't done. But he was still mad at her for eating the last of his chocolate cereal. No one messed with Finn's breakfast...no one.

Hmmm. It seemed that Finn didn't intend to tell her how the window was actually broken. She knew that Emma couldn't have broken the window with her wand. Emma was at Hogwarts, and she wouldn't have been able to make this much of a hole with her wand, since she would only have been able to hit the window with it.

"Finn, this is the second lie you have told me. Emma is at Hogwarts, and she cannot use magic outside the school. You know that. And I know for a fact that your window was unbroken when I said good night to you before leaving for the hospital yesterday. You just wait until your father gets home." She looked over the window and down at her flower bed below it. She saw little pieces of glass glittering in the late afternoon sunlight.

"Well, you and I are going to go down and get the rest of the glass out of my flowerbed, young man. I am not going to be cleaning this up alone, and since you are unwilling to tell me what really happened, you are going to be the one to help me. I will be back in just a moment." She went to her own bedroom and changed to a pair of worn jeans and t-shirt, then returned to her son.

"Come on, I want to get this cleaned before your father gets home and starts asking where his dinner is."

Finn gulped and felt his hands grasp his bedspread nervously. He hated those words, 'just wait until your father gets home.' That meant he would definitely be in big trouble. And now he was starting to think he would have been better off just telling her about the baseball in the first place. Then his daddy wouldn't need to know about the lying. If there was one thing he knew he should never do, it was lie. He had just been so afraid to tell the truth!

He felt tears come to his eyes as he led the way outside and out to the flowers. He thought he had gotten it all, but apparently he had missed quite a bit. He supposed he had just been so nervous before, he wasn't paying attention. Especially because the stupid baseball was still there! He rushed over to it, and turned to make sure his mother was not there yet. Then he immediately tossed it into the pool. He should have destroyed all the evidence to begin with!

He looked back at the flower beds and sighed before turning to his mother.

"Do we have to tell daddy? I mean, I don't want to give him any more stress. The poor guy has enough of it, right?"

Merideth reached Finn and nodded. Ethan needed to know what went on in his house, it was only right. It wasn't fair to keep a secret about what happened to a broken window, even when, as a witch and wizard, they could easily repair it. So she was going to leave it for him to see, and let him decide Finn's final punishment.

She got down on her knees in the grass, pulling on a pair of gardening gloves, and handing another pair to her son as well. She started gathering the little shards of glass from her flowers and shrubbery, indicating that he should do the same.

"Yes, we have to tell your father. Stay out of the bed, I don't want to risk you cutting yourself any more than you already did. When we get it all picked up and properly disposed of, then we will go inside and get dinner around. When Dad gets home, you are going to be the one to tell him, since the window is in your room." She looked over at the pool, to see if the glass had spread that far and saw something floating in it that hadn't been there when she'd looked out the window.

She moved over to the pool and summoned the item. It was a baseball. She looked up at the window that had been shattered, the ball in her hand, and her son, figuring out what had happened in her mind.

"Finn, how did that window get broken again?" She said, putting the ball on the ground next to him. "It slipped my mind for some reason."

Finn's eyes widened and he tried for tears, he really did. But he didn't feel sad anymore...he just felt scared. And more then scared, he was kind of annoyed. He didn't think their father deserved to know everything. He wasn't even here right now, didn't that matter? And why wasn't his mum even concerned about the babysitter not being here? Maybe she had heard how mean the lady was and she had made her leave.

He moodily put on his gardening gloves and started helping her pick up the glass. It would be so easy to keep his dad out of this, but no...everything in this family was all about being open. Well maybe Finn didn't WANT to be open. He just wanted to pretend it didn't happen and save himself.

When he saw that most of the glass was gone, he sat down in a huff and began rolling the baseball back and forth, not tossing it at all like he had done. He looked up at her and sighed.

"Yes, I broke it with the baseball. And NO I didn't mean to...it just sort of slipped out of my hands. Now can we just go inside? I want to get this day over with as soon as possible."

Ethan had had a long, and utterly horrible day. He was so sick of whiny people. It didn't matter at this point, he was just sick of them. If it wasn't his own children it was someone else, and it just happened that he worked with the biggest brats in the world. He worked with famous brats, brats that didn't know what the real world was like. Ethan would admit that he had been well off, but he had always sworn to never let his family be like that. So far it was not going well, all of his children were brats...Ava seemed to be the only calm one, but she had her own little...issues...that were harder to deal with. Sighing he came into the house and dumped his coat on a random chair. He would pick it up later, he wasn't hungry, didn't want to talk to anyone, all he wanted to do was sleep and be left the Hell alone! The first child that crossed him was going to get the fast end of a paddle, no questions asked...and he would NOT feel one shred of guilt for it.

Going upstairs to his room, he began removing his tie and kicking off his shoes. He wasn't going to speak to anyone but his wife, and even then they would have limited contact with one another. His Meri knew it wasn't personal, it was just that when he was in a bad mood it was best that everyone stayed as far away from him as possible until he calmed down. Moving down the hall he stopped at Finn's room and his eyes shot to a broken window...what...the...Hell? Hadn't GOD heard him!? He wasn't putting UP with this bullshit today!!!

He looked at his son and glared, and then looked at the baseball and glared harder. He could see them downstairs, and could not believe he had not noticed before, maybe it had been because he had been in his own little world. Quickly rushing back downstairs he raced outside and turned to his son. Crossing his arms over his chest he looked down at Finn.

"You have five minutes to explain, two minutes to apologize, and one minute to get your butt over here so I can punish you...go."

Ethan

Finn looked up in surprise at his father's sudden arrival, and he felt his throat suddenly run dry and his mind go blank. How was he supposed to tell him the exact truth of what had happened when he thought that any second he might pee his pants from sheer anxiety?! He gulped and stood, knowing that this was the best way to confess. He needed to stand up tall and brave, even though his hands were shaking. He looked up into his father's eyes and took a deep breath.

"I found the baseball at school, and I brought it home to play with. I thought I was being careful, Daddy, I really did...but the ball went through the window."

There wasn't really much else to say when it actually came to what happened with the window. He broke it, tried to clean it up, and then his mum came home. But what about all the lies he had told? Would his mother sell him out? Would she tell his dad about the 'vampire bite,' or how Finn had blamed Emma? If he knew those things, Finn wouldn't be sitting down for a good long while. But if he didn't tell him, and his mum told him, he'd also have a pretty sore backside. He was toast either way. So, he decided to just take his chances and skip right over it.

"And I promise to help fix it, if I can. And I'm really sorry I wasn't more careful."

And as his father had so bluntly suggested, Finn walked over to him, took a deep breath, and waited to see what his fate would be.

Meri sighed as her husband came storming out of the house. She knew just from his tone as he spoke to Finn that he'd had a bad day. Apparently, very bad. He usually wasn't like this with his children. And she knew it would only get worse when she told him about the lies their son had told to keep himself out of trouble.

She watched her son now give the truth to his father, and wished that he had just done that in the first place, since by attempting to lie, he'd gotten himself into even more trouble than he would have been for just the window. But it was only right that he be punished for that as well. It was good that her son wasn't any better at it.

"Ethan, before you decide his punishment, you should know that he's also tried to cover his tracks with a vampire biting his finger, and his sister, both whom he said broke the window," Merideth sighed.

She didn't like having to tell Ethan that in his current temper, it was only going to serve to make it worse for Finn when he did receive his punishment.

"Please, Honey. Why don't you let me handle this? You go on inside and do what you were about to do, and I will take care if disciplining Finn."

She wasn't getting her hopes up. Ethan was on the warpath, and everyone knew to stay out of his way when that happened.

Ethan looked at his son and felt his lips sink farther down into an even more disappointed frown. He was so not in the mood for this! And Merideth knew that even if she wanted to discipline him it would never sink in quite as well as when he would do it. Turning to his wife he shook his head, hoping that she would get the message that HE would be the one punishing his son.

"You lied to your mother," he said sternly. "That is one of the greatest forms of disrespect young man. I am very disappointed in you, and you know better than to look one of us in the eye and try to lie your way out of trouble."

He took his son's hand in his hand and gently tugged him towards the house. Ethan was never one to spank his children outside where the world could observe, he was not his friend Aiden...but he was not above spanking them once they were inside his own home.

"You know the punishment for lying young man," he continued as he led him past the loft into the living room. "And you could have avoided all of this if you had just told the truth and taken fault for what you had done."

Finn half-walked and half-ran alongside his father. It had always been so tough to follow along with his daddy. His legs were so much longer, and Finn usually had to beg him to slow down. But this time, he knew it was futile. Nothing would make that man slow down now, not until he had properly punished his son. Finn knew that, but he still didn't want to accept it.

"Daddy! Daddy stop, please! I'm sorry!" He was practically begging. He would have gotten on his knees, but there was no time.

He was now truly regretting the lies he had told. Had his father really just said that he would not have been spanked if he had just told the truth? Why hadn't he thought of that before?! Well, it was too late now. He was currently in the living room, awaiting his punishment, and he was already starting to cry.

"Daddy, I'll fix it! And I'll never lie again, I prooomise!"

He looked up into his father's eyes, mentally pleading with him to forget about the punishment and just hold him. He felt soft tears falling down his cheeks at the fear and embarrassment he already felt. He couldn't even imagine how bad he would feel afterward.

Ethan listened to his son's cries, and could not help but ignore them. He had had a bad day with spoiled clients and his sons cries and pleads were not making his job as a father any easier. Of course he did not enjoy spanking his son, but when a person needed to be punished then he was not one to let them off the hook. Sighing he pull his son with him and sat down, so that when the time came he would be able to easily drape Finn over his lap. His boy had to know that even though he was about to spank the daylights out of him that he still loved him. And Ethan had been paddled enough to know that when it came to this kind of punishment comfort was always needed afterwards.

"You know that what you did was wrong Finn, and you also know that there are certain punishments for certain rules broken...lying is one that gets a person spanked...and you know that you deserve it. I promise that it is only eleven swats. Nine for how old you are and the two extra for breaking the window."

He decided that he would be kind and let his boy keep his pants up while this happened, Ethan was not in favor of swatting his children bare assed...he had done it once or twice for each and every time regretted it always. And he could say with pride that he had never used a paddle on any of them either...granted he supposed that none of them would try to get away with such murder if he had. But his friend Aiden used the paddle on his children and he noticed that April was still a little dare devil regardless. Taking in a deep breath he raised his hand and brought it down on his son's backside the full eleven swats. He had tried to make it as quick as possible, but that still not lessen the twinge of pain he felt in his heart...or the heat that emitted form his hand from swatting his son so hard.

Fixing his boy so that he was settled back on top of his lap he held him close and stroked his back gently with his hand. His son would never know how much he loved him. He was the only boy he had...his little boy...and although he was stern with him, Finn had to know that his daddy loved him very much.

"Shh," he hushed. "It's okay little one...I forgive you...and you know that I still love you."

Finn cried and cried against his daddy's chest. His backside was stinging, but that was nothing compared to the guilt he felt for the day's events. He kept remembering his mother's eyes as he lied to her, or thinking back to the look his father had given him right before punishing him. Finn knew he was angry, but he was also disappointed. And that feeling fed into guilt so easily.

"I'm sorry, Daddy!" He cried, clutching his father's broad chest. Not only was he upset about being spanked, but the poor kid was just exhausted. Stressing out over a broken window and lying about it really took all of the energy out of a person. And they still hadn't even had dinner yet!

Finn closed his eyes and willed himself to stay awake, but his body had other plans.

"Daddy, I don't wanna take a nap," he whispered. But every time he tried to look up at him, his eyes would droop. This was what came from the tears. All of this crying was lulling him to sleep.

"Can you lie down with me?" He asked softly. "I promise I'll be good."