Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Growing Up Quick	By : KittyMitty Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 1880 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Disclaimer: Characters,
settings, etc. belong to JK Rowling and associates. No money is being
made.

Chapter One: The Boy Who Was a
Father

"Harry?"

Harry Potter was pulled from a
restless and rather uncomfortable sleep by the voice of one of his
best friends speaking alarmingly close to his ear. With a surprised
yelp, the black-haired boy jerked upright from the large
Transfiguration tome he'd been face-planted in, almost immediately
regretting this action when the severe crick in his neck became known
with a particularly vicious throb. Clapping a hand over the offending
area he twisted around in his seat, glaring blearily through crooked
glasses at Hermione Granger, who had quickly backed up to avoid a
collision with the crown of Harry's head.

"Hermione!" he croaked
while rubbing furiously at his stiff shoulder, trying to work out the
Sickle-sized knots he felt there. "You trying to kill me? You
nearly gave me a hear attack!"

"Well, how was I to know
you'd react as though you'd seen Voldemort's ghost?" she
retorted, folding her arms across her front and matching the
green-eyed boy's glare. "I'd only been saying your name for five
minutes, after all, and it's not as though I hadn't been yelling it
to the high heavens, either. What, have you started stuffing cotton
in your ears before bed, now, or is it merely the fluff that fills
your head beginning to leak out?"

Someone swallowed a Humour
Potion this morning, thought Harry grumpily. Fluff, indeed. So
he'd turned into quite the heavy sleeper this past summer, that was
no excuse to scare five years off his life!

"There was still no reason
for you to sneak up like that, you know," Harry's mouth voiced
his thoughts mutinously, undoubtedly guaranteeing an eye roll and a
"tsk" from his counterpart. Nevertheless, he pressed on.
"Not a good way to wake someone up, I can tell you. I could have
hexed you on instinct, and then what would you've done?"

"Oh, please." Hermione
tsked and rolled her eyes. Shocking, thought Harry
sarcastically to himself. "Firstly, I'd be able to block
anything you tried to throw at me, as seconds before you were dead to
the world and stampeding Hippogriffs wouldn't have woken you.
Secondly, you're over-reacting."

"No, I'm under-sleeping,"
Harry corrected, suppressing a yawn as he straightened his glasses
and absently wiped the drool from his chin with the back of his hand.
"I haven't had a full night's sleep in almost four months.
Forgive me for feeling a little less than thrilled at being so rudely
awoken from much needed slumber. And you clearly underestimate my
hex-throwing abilities, Hermione," he added after a slight
pause, in deference to his pride.

Hermione actually hmphed at this,
a sound that did nothing to improve Harry's fantastically mulish
mood. "Well, so sorry to startle you, then," she snapped,
and the raven-haired boy could almost taste her indignation, she was
laying it so thickly onto her words. "Next time I'll just thwap
you over the head with your broomstick to wake you up, shall I? Or
maybe drop a bucket of ice water over you instead, hmm? Would that be
more to your liking, Mr 'I've made my bed, but am going to complain
every second I lie in it'?"

Oh, here we go. Groaning,
Harry slumped his shoulders and attempted to burrow into the chair
back, preparing for a long one. Spending most of last year in the
company of a mothering, albeit slightly disapproving, Molly Weasley
had gotten Harry more than used to the "you've had your play,
now it's time to pay" lecture: he'd been hearing it ever since
he'd revealed his surprise pregnancy to the few close people in his
life. Every time Harry had bemoaned his fate while spending quality
time with the toilet, Mrs Weasley had been there with a wet flannel,
switching back and forth between cooing and tutting while wiping
sweat and sick off Harry's face. When Harry had gotten into a
spectacular row with the mirror above the mantel because it had
called him "Tubby", Mrs Weasley had rushed over to
intervene, shushing the cackling mirror and managing to give Harry a
very meaningful look that quite obviously said, "Well, you are
seven months along, dear." When Harry had been up to his elbows
in dirty nappies and shite, very near tears and desperate for some
sleep, Mrs Weasley had graciously taken over for the afternoon, but
only after humming in a way that plainly inferred, "Shame on you
for thinking it's all just daisies and roses, you know." And
then when Hermione had shown up mid-July with her "I told you
so" air, patented glares and rehearsed scoldings ... well, it
was all Harry could do to keep from hexing the women's mouths shut
every time they drew near.

That's not to say Harry didn't
appreciate having Mrs Weasley as a surrogate grandmother to his
daughter, or Hermione's role as an overly-caring friend. Without
their help – all the Weasleys' help, really – Harry
wouldn't have lasted a week on his own. If it weren't for Mrs
Weasley's afternoon sittings, or Hermione's evening tutor sessions –
Harry with a book in one hand, baby in the other – he was quite
sure he would have floundered in all the summer homework his
professors had assigned him. If Ron hadn't been brave enough to give
up his attic room for the summer and kip in the twin's old room –
amongst poisonous packages, random sizzling sounds emitted from an
ominous-looking Muggle stop-watch, and a horrendous smell of spoiled
doxycide – or if Mr Weasley hadn't found his collection of old
Muggle music boxes that helped soothe the baby back to sleep after
her three o'clock feedings, then the green-eyed boy would have been
wailing constantly himself. Hell, if Fred and George hadn't developed
their new line of baby-safe products ("Ear-Ache Begone Solution
– One Drop And The Screaming Stops!", "Anti-Rash
Nappy Powder – Keeps The Bum Smooth And The Baby Quiet!",
and "Teething Remedying Gel – Helps Growing Of Teeth For
Tots, And Parents Dealing With Dribble Spots!"), then Harry
would have marched himself to St Mungo's and asked for a bed in the
Janus Thickey Ward ... but only after he cursed himself dizzy, of
course.

Harry's summer, and the eight
months leading up to it, had been very different from the ones he had
experienced in previous years. He hadn't finished off his sixth year
at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with his friends and
classmates as he had first planned: the Death Eaters had seen to
that. Harry had been at Hogwarts hardly two weeks when there had been
an abduction attempt by a rogue group of Voldemort's followers, who
had all managed to evade capture by the Aurors after their lord's
final downfall. Ultimately the plan for revenge had failed, as the
leaders of the group had been the elders Crabbe and Goyle, and though
they had managed to allude the Aurors' grasps after the fall of their
master, they had made it perfectly clear where their sons had
received their half-wit from, when Harry had distracted them by
pointing behind them and shouting, "Look! A new Dark Lord!"
and then making a fairly easy retreat back into Hogwarts castle while
the two older wizards glanced stupidly over their shoulders. They and
four of their comrades had all run off when they'd seen Harry
disappear through the castle's main doors, knowing that any place
with Albus Dumbledore residing in it was not a place they wanted to
enter, and thus had ended that particularly pathetic threat to
Harry's life.

The whole affair had been rather
anti-climatic, to say the least, and had left the inhabitants of
Hogwarts, professors included, rather bemused. Though the actual
attack on Harry had failed miserably, leaving the black-haired boy
with nothing more than an insignificant burn on the inside of his
ankle from when Crabbe senior had accidentally dropped his wand,
Professor Dumbledore had still insisted on Harry immediately
relocating to number twelve, Grimmauld Place, to wait it out until
the rest of the Death Eaters had been captured. After this particular
decision from his headmaster, Harry had caused quite a stir, not
liking the thought of being left alone in a dreary old house that had
far too many unhappy memories, and was severely lacking in friendly
inhabitants (unless doxies, ghouls and Boggarts could be constituted
as "friendly"). He'd found it quite unfair to be forced
into hiding after having finally destroyed the most evil wizard of
the age, thinking that it was high time he be allowed to start living
his life without having the fear of being offed lurking around him
wherever he went. After all the physical pain, emotional turmoil, and
feelings of great loss Harry and many others had suffered at the
hands of that snake bastard, the very last thing he had felt like
doing was being separated from what he had considered to be his only
home, and the remaining people of what he thought as his family.

In the end Harry had reluctantly
agreed to be hidden away, but only after a rather lengthy discussion
with his constantly level-headed headmaster, whom had promised it
would only be a temporary solution, and assured Harry that he would
not be left completely alone in the decrepit House of Black. It was
then Harry had learned that his third year Defence Against the Dark
Arts professor and friend to his late parents, Remus Lupin, had
agreed to tutor him during his absence from Hogwarts, and though it
was a far cry from spending his time with his best friends, in his
beloved school, Harry enjoyed the soft-spoken man's company all the
same, and happily waited out the capture of his incompetent
abductors, confident that it would only take a few weeks' time, if
even that.

Harry should have realised then
that nothing in his life ever turned out the way it was first
expected. When the last of the Death Eaters had finally been
rounded up by the Aurors – Antonin Dolohov having been found
living incognito as an eighty-year-old witch in Northern France
mid-March – the green-eyed boy's plans had changed yet again.
After spending nearly six months at Grimmauld Place, Harry had
decided not to return to Hogwarts for the remaining three months of
his sixth year, instead opting to relocate to the Burrow with Remus,
to spend some time with the Weasley parents in their much more warm
and welcoming home. The reason given to the student body of Hogwarts,
not to mention the whole of wizarding Britain, for Harry's continued
absence was that he had been suffering from magical exhaustion due to
his final confrontation with Voldemort, and was finishing the year in
a quiet location with relatives, so as not to over-exert himself. The
real reason, of course, had been that Harry was over five months
pregnant, and though school robes would have easily covered his
slightly bulging stomach in the beginning of his return to school, it
would have eventually become fairly obvious that he was expecting,
the closer they neared his due date in early June.

After Madam Pomfrey had made the
startling discovery that Harry's bad case of stomach flu was in fact
him entering his second trimester, the adults in his life (Mr and Mrs
Weasley, Headmaster Dumbledore and Remus Lupin) had all sat down with
him and explained that in no uncertain terms could his pregnancy be
revealed to the wizarding public. Not only would it cause a complete
political upheaval between Harry's Ministry supporters and their
opponents, what with the sixteen-year-old saviour of the wizarding
world having a baby only months after ending a war, but it could give
a Dark wizard with a wand and a grudge the perfect opportunity to
attack Harry while in such a vulnerable state.

There really hadn't been a choice
for him to go back to Hogwarts at all, no matter the glamours he
could use to conceal his expecting state, and in a complete contrast
to his reaction to being sent to Grimmauld Place, Harry had readily
agreed to stay with the Weasleys, trying to look at it as an extended
holiday that involved mood swings and back aches. Remus had
graciously continued his tutoring of Harry for the remainder of the
year, Ron's mum had taken it upon herself to get Harry through the
pregnancy in one piece, and in all honesty the green-eyed boy hadn't
really minded being kept locked away in the Burrow all that much.
Remus and Mr and Mrs Weasley had proved good company; Remus with his
helpful words of wisdom and quiet wit, Mr Weasley constantly asking
absurd questions about mundane Muggle appliances, and Mrs Weasley
mothering and fussing over Harry's eating habits. Hermione and Ron
had spent most of their free weekends visiting with Harry as well;
Hermione keeping him up to date with class lectures and Ron relaying
Quidditch matches in minute detail, so as not to make the other boy
feel left out of his favourite past-time. He'd appreciated every
effort his best friends went through to keep him feeling involved,
and with few exceptions, including furtive looks between one another
when Harry refused to talk about the other person involved in the
conception of his baby, and quick, edgy glances toward his gradually
swelling stomach, the two Gryffindors had been nothing but supportive
of Harry and his child.

And Harry had needed all the
support he could find. Being told that he had a small life growing
inside of him had been far from expected; he hadn't even known that
in the wizarding world males could conceive and give birth in the
first place. The concept had been so far-fetched, so completely and
utterly out there, that when Madam Pomfrey had first explained
the magical ramifications that could take place inside a wizard if
they had unprotected sex with another male, Harry had not believed
her, and had thought it all a rather sick prank being played on him.
The thought of him growing fat and then eventually popping out a baby
through he didn't even know where had had Harry's head reeling
for days afterwards, and he had stubbornly refused to
acknowledge the fact that that was what had been causing his nausea
and severe cramping. It had taken days of yelling down the roof of
Grimmauld Place, crying on any shoulder he could find (Harry later
blamed the hormones), and countless hours of reading through dusty
old books Remus supplied him with before he could finally accept the
fact that wizards could have children. Then, after all that, it took
an additional two days of Harry sitting alone in his darkened
bedroom, with one hand splayed across his still flat stomach, until
he understood that it had indeed happened to him, and that in a
little over six months he was going to have a baby.

That life-altering realisation had
been accompanied by many a sleepless night, countless temper
tantrums, and numerous visits to the toilet that had nothing to do
with morning sickness and everything to do with gut-wrenching
anxiety. Harry, a boy who had had next to no experience with sex and
relationships, pregnant at sixteen? The irony had been almost
comical: that Harry would have one drunken night, one lapse in
judgement, and end up pregnant with the last person he would ever
pick to have a baby with would have made Harry laugh hysterically ...
if it had happened to anyone other than him.

For Harry had known that he would
never be able to rely on the other person involved with the
conception; their history together was rocky at best, and the other
involved would see their baby as a mistake, an abomination against
wizarding society. Harry couldn't even bare to think of what they
would say about him and their child, because though he had known from
the beginning that he was far from ready to take care of a baby on
his own, Harry had not once been able to consider the little being
inside of him a mistake. A pregnancy had certainly been unexpected,
and Harry was unprepared to deal with it, that much he could not
deny, but the reality was that he had created a life, and that life
was a part of him; a tiny little baby that was a part of his family.
That thought alone had been enough to have Harry decide to keep the
baby and raise it, with or without others' help, no matter what the
consequences would be.

Of course, his worries of taking
care of a baby by himself had all been for naught: he should have
known from the beginning that his friends and the people who mattered
to him most would never abandon him. During his pregnancy, he had
prepared himself for taking care of a child as best as his situation
had allowed him, and it had all been done with the help of others,
including attending biweekly visits with Madam Pomfrey, Hogwarts'
matron; adhering to the strict diets she had put him on; conceding to
one of Mr Weasley's suggestions at keeping a preggers diary (Harry
had refused to call it his "mother-to-be" diary);
allowing himself to be kept under very close observation by both
Remus and Mrs Weasley; and reading every book on male pregnancies and
baby care Hermione looked up for him. Ron had solemnly offered to
help Harry with nappy-changing, and had been there with his best mate
as Mr Weasley had sat Harry down and explained to him the finer
points of fatherhood. In fact, Harry had been so dedicated to giving
his baby a good head start in life that he had even spent countless
hours with his feet in Mrs Weasley's lap, listening raptly as the
motherly woman spoke in great detail of the pregnancies and
deliveries of her seven children. Afterwards, Harry had felt
confident in what to expect for the remainder of his time expecting
-- though he could have lived without the detailed description of Mrs
Weasley's troubles with haemorrhoids while carrying Fred and George.

Actual child care was what had had
Harry worried the most during the months leading up to the birth.
After all the books and pamphlets he had read through and memorised,
he had felt thoroughly squicked about all the things he needed to
remember for taking care of a baby. He had never known that there was
a common ailment that sometimes caused newborn babies to cry for no
apparent reason, or that putting them to bed on their stomachs and
with blankets and plushies could actually suffocate them.
Reading that his heartbeat was a useful tool to help calm his baby
down had been a fortunate titbit to find, and he had been quite
confident when it came to learning how to support the baby's head and
neck while holding it, but he had nearly lost his lunch while reading
up on a graphic description of the soft-spot on the top of a
newborn's head, and when he had realised what he needed to do if ever
his baby could not poo ... well, he had sincerely hoped that his
child never had that particular digestion problem.

And those were just some of the
Muggle things to remember! Wizarding babies were a whole different
Quidditch match, Harry had soon realised. Not only could he not
perform strong magic on or around his baby for the first year of its
life, for fear of interference to the baby's developing magical core,
but he had also been informed that it was quite natural for young
babies to experience magical "outbursts" (how big of an
outburst he was to expect, the books ironically never mentioned) as
they grew accustomed to their magic, though that was only if, Merlin
willing, his child didn't come out a Squib. To be sure that his baby
did have magical abilities and was controlling them properly, for the
first year he'd be required to take his child to regular check-ups
that included magical screenings and aura readings, and apparently
sparks shooting out of his baby's fingers while they were crying was
a natural occurrence and a good sign that things were progressing and
developing well, and was to be expected for the first six months of
his baby's life. It had all left Harry rather wide-eyed and nervous,
especially when Madam Pomfrey had left him after a particularly
informative check-up with a brisk, "Not to worry, Mr. Potter:
wizarding parents deal with magical babies every day. It's all
completely natural, and I'm sure Professor Flitwick will teach you
some excellent flame-retardant charms to help you along."

With all the reading he had done,
and all of Mrs Weasley's stories he had listened to, and all the
warnings and concerned clucks Madam Pomfrey had supplied him with,
Harry had known going into it that fatherhood was going to prove a
very difficult job indeed, but he honestly had had no idea just what
a wake-up call having a baby could truly be. Not only did it make him
realise that he now had to take care of himself properly (a thing
that had never overly-concerned Harry, as up until the previous
summer he'd been prepared to die before he turned eighteen), he also
now had a tiny little human being completely dependent on him. Also,
he'd been quite alarmed to realise, St Mungo's Healers did not
exactly give witches (or wizards) time to adjust to this
earth-shattering realisation. After having his daughter at nearly
half-past one in the morning, amidst close friends in a
heavily-warded room to keep away prying eyes and reporters, he had
been thrust back into the real world carrying a bundle of squirming
blankets by lunch time the next afternoon, with hardly a crash course
in nappy-changing, and some ridiculously complicated
folding-technique called "swaddling".

He had arrived back at the Burrow
that afternoon a new father, feeling both elated and scared, all the
information he'd read up on during the pregnancy racing in circles
through his dazed mind. After everyone had had a proper coo over the
newest member to the Potter family, Mrs Weasley had handed Harry a
few bottles of formula, patted him encouragingly on the cheek, and
then sent him upstairs to spend the rest of the day and night alone
with his new daughter. Bonding time, Ron's mum had called it. Total
spaz-fest is how Harry would have better described it, after he'd
learned the hard way that babies didn't have off switches, and that
their favourite past-time – second only to sleeping – was
wailing their little lungs out. The rest of that first day had been
spent with Harry either pacing the length of the room with his crying
daughter in his arms, rocking furiously in the chair placed by the
window as he tried not to drip formula all over her chin while he fed
her, or slumped over the side of her cot, staring in awe at the tiny
little person he'd brought into the world; feeling both excited and
terrified about how the rest of the day would go, and if he'd
actually manage to survive that first sleepless, nerve-fraying night.

But survive the first night he
did, as well as the next, and then the next, and fifteen weeks later
Harry was finally beginning to feel as though he was getting the hang
of the whole parenting thing. The scared thoughts and feelings –
the nervousness at buggering up his daughter's life for good –
were still there, floating in the back of his mind, and he doubted
very much they would ever completely disappear, but for the moment he
was quite content in just focusing on taking care of his baby, and
reveling in the knowledge that there was someone in the world that
would love him endlessly and with no expectations, no matter what he
did to bollocks it all up.

Lost in his thoughts of the past
few months, Harry failed to notice that his attention had noticeably
wavered as well. It was only the sight of Hermione beginning to fluff
up like an angry cat, due to his lack of response to whatever she had
been saying, that had the green-eyed boy snapping back into reality
with a quick shake of his scruffy head.

Deciding that on second thought it
was best to end this dispute quickly and leave Hermione the victor,
lest his ear be lectured off, Harry hastily asked, "Er, so why
was it you were told to come and wake me up?" trying to convey
an apology for being so shirty with his well-meaning friend with a
smile that felt more tired than winning.

Hermione paused in her puffing up
and frowned, knowing perfectly well that Harry was merely looking for
a getaway opportunity, but she soon enough relented – as Harry
knew she would – sighing in a very put-upon way.

"Breakfast is nearly ready,"
she informed him briskly as she strode across the room to the
curtained window and yanked the drapes open, filling the neon-orange
room with bright, mid-morning sunlight. "We're heading to Diagon
Alley right after we've finished eating, and Mrs Weasley said to make
sure you have the baby ready before you come down for food."

"We're going to Diagon
Alley?" Harry blinked rapidly, trying to adjust his eyes to the
new intruding light source. He shielded his face with his hand
impatiently and squinted up at Hermione's silhouette. "Since
when?"

"Since Professor Dumbledore
owled last night and suggested you take that daughter of yours out
and into public before heading off to Hogwarts," Hermione
informed him promptly. "And really, it's a very good idea if you
think about it, Harry." She walked over to Harry's trunk and
began digging through its contents, presumably to find something for
the black-haired boy to wear for the outing. "That way less
people will be surprised at seeing you show up on the platform with a
baby, and therefore less likely to mob you. Quite ingenious really,
don't you think?"

Harry didn't think this a very
ingenious idea. In fact, he thought it a rather shoddy idea, and it
must have shown on his face, because when Hermione looked back over
her shoulder at him, her breath puffed out in exasperation and she
shook her head.

"Don't even think about
trying to get out of this, Harry Potter," she warned him, her
finger waggling threateningly in his direction while the other hand
rooted around for a clean pair of trousers. "You've holed that
poor baby up in this house for long enough. She needs to get out and
start interacting with other people, not to mention getting used to
surroundings different from the Burrow. She's not used to any other
people and places, and for Merlin's sake, the only sun that poor
baby's seen is through a window!"

Harry felt vaguely insulted by
what his friend was saying. Really, he thought it a bit much for
Hermione to start berating his parenting skills. He was, after all,
quite new at it, and the only major incident he'd had thus far was
when he'd woken up in the middle of the night during his third week
as a father, briefly fearing that he'd rolled over and onto his own
daughter while he'd slept. After ten frenzied seconds in which he'd
desperately searched through the bed clothes for his lost baby, he'd
glanced over to the cradle and spotted his daughter resting
peacefully and safely, completely oblivious to her panicking,
sleep-crazed father.

"I just don't see why it's
necessary to take her to such a ... crowded place for her
first outing," said Harry stiffly as he heaved himself out of
the chair he'd fallen asleep in. He hummed in satisfaction as dozens
of little pops and cracks sounded up and down his spine when he
stretched his arms high above his head. "And after all," he
continued, scratching his side and suppressing a yawn, "the more
people that see me with her means the more photographers and
reporters trying to write cracked up stories about us, and splashing
our picture all over the Daily Prophet. Funnily enough, that
doesn't sound very appealing to me."

To Harry's utter surprise, a look
of sympathy instead of exasperation flitted across his friend's face.

"You know that's going to
happen no matter what," said Hermione softly, reasonably, as she
straightened up from the trunk, walked back over to Harry and placed
a hand comfortingly on his arm. "You're Harry Potter, saviour of
the wizarding world. The Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, and whatever
other ridiculous names they've come up for you this week. You showing
up with a baby that has your eyes is going to cause quite a stir, no
matter when or how it happens."

When Harry gave no sign of
agreeing with her, the bushy-haired girl tried a different approach.
"I know that you're worried about how all this is going to
affect the baby, and that alone makes you a top dad, but sadly even
the great Harry Potter won't be able to stop this from eventually
happening. Not everyone is going to understand, Harry, and eventually
you'll need to accept that." She gave his bicep a reassuring
squeeze before continuing hopefully, "But just think, at least
you'll be able to control when and where everyone finds out about
her. You know as well as I do that Dumbledore would eat Fawkes before
allowing photographers and reporters anywhere near Hogwarts, and the
security at King's Cross makes it nearly impossible for students
to get onto the platform, let alone people who aren't authorised to
be there. And with any luck, we'll be in and out of Diagon Alley
before the reporters can even catch wind of you being there, and
you'll have worried all for nothing."

This Harry severely doubted, as
reporters had been sniffing around for him ever since he had gone
into hiding the year before, and one word about him being out in the
streets would surely have them flocking to Diagon Alley within
minutes, blood-thirsty for front page news and wielding their
Quick-Quote Quills and cameras. But Hermione did have a point about
Dumbledore keeping reporters out of Harry's and his baby's hair once
they reached Hogwarts, and personal experience had him understanding
quite well how difficult the barrier entrance onto platform nine and
three-quarters could be to get past if one was not wanted there.
There was a slim chance that he and his daughter could avoid getting
caught by the reporters -- very slim, but there all the same.

Still feeling a prickling of
unease at the base of his spine about the whole outing, though not as
severely as moments before, Harry again smiled at Hermione, this time
managing an easy grin with only a hint of tiredness peaking out
around the edges of his eyes. Hermione smiled back at him, before
squeezing his arm a final time, laying the clothes she'd picked out
for him on the bed, and turning to the door.

"Don't forget to have the
baby ready for the day before you bring her down," she reminded
him as she opened the door.

Harry's grin quickly morphed into
a grimace as he glanced to where his daughter was resting.

"But Hermione," he
protested as he turned back to see the girl step out into the
hallway. "It's nearing nine o'clock, and she's actually still
sleeping for once. Do I really have to –"

"Yes, you really have
to wake her up right now," replied Hermione, before Harry could
even finish his plea. She frowned and looked disapprovingly at him
for the fourth time in as many minutes. "This is why she doesn't
have consistent sleeping patterns, Harry. Ron's mum has been telling
you since you got back from hospital that you need to get her into a
schedule by waking her up at certain times, and I read in that one
parenting book, Caring for a Magical Baby, that –"

"All right, all right, I'll
wake her up," Harry interrupted hurriedly, keen on keeping
Hermione away from lecture-mode. "Just ... tell everyone I'll be
down in a few for me, will you?"

"I will, though try to be
ready in ten minutes, Harry, the Weasleys have been waiting to start
breakfast."

She left after this last comment,
and as Hermione's footsteps faded down the rickety staircase, Harry
approached the cot which held his slumbering daughter and glanced
down inside it, his breath hitching as it always did whenever he
looked upon his sleeping baby.
- 1
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Growing Up Quick