I wrote this for inmemoriam7 on livejournal; prompt: baby
The males of the Dumbledore family sat nervously in the drawing room. Percival straightened his collar time and time again, while his son perched uncomfortably on the edge of a hard wooden chair and tried to resist the urge to fidget.
"Daddy, can we please play?" Albus asked finally, his young mind unable to cope with the skull-numbing boredom of sitting still. To give credit where credit was due, he'd been sitting on the uncomfortable chair for two and a half hours without complaining and he was only six years old.
"Not now," Percival said distractedly. "I am busy."
"You're just sitting there," Albus objected with the irritating honesty of childhood. Percival resisted the urge to snap at his son – after all, Albus was only small – and told him to select a book from the shelf and read it.
Albus had just immersed himself in The Tales of Beedle the Bard when the door opened and a tired-looking Healer came in.
"The baby is born, and Madam Dumbledore is doing well," she announced. Percival jumped up from his seat as if a red-hot poker had been applied strategically.
"Do I have a son or a daughter?" he asked.
"A daughter," the Healer replied. Percival closed his eyes briefly and then followed the Healer. He had wanted a second son to keep Albus company, as a governess could not provide the brotherly companionship a sibling could.
When Percival saw his daughter, she was tiny and red and round. She wasn't crying, although she was awake, and Percival decided that he was glad that Kendra had given birth to this beautiful girl instead of a handsome boy.
When his daughter opened her eyes and looked at him with a tranquillity hardly ever held by babies, Percival wondered if maybe he and Kendra should have another child. Such a precious and delicate girl deserved two doting brothers to protect her from the world outside.