Written for Queen Lexi, who is amazing and deserves everything. I hope you enjoy this!

Thanks to Em for betaing this!

Word count: 4123

my kingdom for a kindred soul

Fist poised to knock on the door, Harry paused for a moment, heaving a deep sigh. Should he really interrupt now? If Ginny knew he was here, she'd kill him—he had certainly gotten enough knowing looks and "come on, Harry, you can see that Lily's happy with Scorpius" sent his way to know when it was time to quit—but it wasn't like Harry was trying to sabotage the wedding or his daughter's relationship.

Well, not anymore anyway.

(there had been times, at first, when Harry had thought Scorpius wasn't good enough for his precious daughter, and while he hadn't quite changed his mind on that—after all, no one was good enough for Lily—he had also accepted that Scorpius loved her and that he was the one Lily wanted. Honestly, that was all Harry could ask for in the end)

Harry sighed and was about to turn away and head back to his wife, who he was sure would find something else for him to help with, when the door suddenly opened. Something, or rather someone, collided heavily with his chest, causing him to rock backward on his heels even as he braced himself against the wall to steady himself.

"Lily?" he asked, surprised to find himself looking into his daughter's eyes.

"Lily, come on, you know you-" an exasperated voice came from inside the room, followed by heavy footsteps before a familiar head of brown hair stepped into view. "Oh, hi, Uncle Harry," Rose said sheepishly.

Lily chuckled weakly against Harry's chest.

"Hi, Rose," Harry replied, feeling somewhat bemused. "Is something the matter?"

Rose sighed, frowning as she cast a quick look toward Lily. Evidently, what she found there seemed to appease her, because she nodded slightly. "I think Lily's having pre-wedding jitters," she explained. "I just… I don't know what to do."

She looked and sounded so defeated that Harry couldn't help but feel for her. "I'm sure you did your best," he reassured her, "but why don't I take it from here?"

She frowned again, shooting another questioning look Lily's way, who barely reacted. "I guess," Rose replied, though she sounded unsure. "I mean, if Lily doesn't need me, and you're sure it wouldn't be a bother…"

Harry smiled. "It's fine, really. Lily? Are you okay with Rose leaving for now? She'll come back later."

Lily just shrugged.

"Well, I guess she's fine with it," Harry stated, looking at Rose. "Why don't you go help your grandmother? Last I heard she was in the kitchen, trying to make sure the food will be ready on time."

"Ugh, do I have to?" Rose complained, which proved once again that Molly's nitpicking when it came to planning her family's happiness was legendary.

"Go, I'll be fine," Lily intervened, stepping away from Harry. Her eyes were slightly red, but she wasn't crying.

"You sure?" Rose asked. "Cause screw your dad—I mean, not screw-screw, cause eww—if you want me to stay I'll stay."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Harry said, amused despite himself.

"I'm not sorry," Rose replied, her mother's familiar determination etched on her face.

"Rose!" Lily chastised, cheeks reddening. "And yeah, Dad, please do ignore that." She turned back toward her cousin. "I'll be fine," she repeated. "Go make sure Grandma doesn't drive everyone mad," she joked tiredly.

"Argh, fine, but you owe me for this. You owe me so much!"

"I'll pay you back," Lily replied, rolling her eyes. She didn't move until Rose had left, and even then, she only took the five steps needed to collapse on her bed. Harry sat next to her.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly.

"I'm fine," Lily sighed, but she didn't sound convinced. She sat up suddenly, eyes wide as she bit her lips. She clutched at her sheets. "I, Dad, what if…?" Her mouth opened and closed haplessly as she struggled to find the right words to voice her doubts.

Harry huffed out a low laugh and tugged at Lily's wrist until she let herself fall against his chest.

"Hey, whatever it is, you can tell me, okay? You know you can tell me anything."

"I know, Dad. It's just…" She heaved a frustrated sigh and rubbed at her eyes forcefully. "I just—what if this isn't the right thing to do? What if we're moving too fast? We haven't even been living together for a full year yet, and what if they – what if this is too soon and we ruin everything?"

Lily was almost in tears by the end of her tirade, and Harry's own eyes were watering in sympathy even as a fierce fire started burning in his chest. His daughter was hurting, and he needed to help her.

"Do you think it's too soon"? he asked.

Lily frowned, looking at him with confusion. "What do you mean, 'do I think it's too soon?'? I just told you that-"

Harry shook his head. "No, what you told me was what other people thought. I'm asking you what you think. Lily, it's your wedding. Well, yours and Scorpius," he added, making sure to grimace exaggeratedly on Scorpius' name in the way that never failed to make her smile, "the only opinions that should matter are yours."

"But," Lily started to protest.

"No buts," Harry replied. "This isn't the kind of choice you can let others influence you on—Merlin knows I'd never have married your mother if I had listened to what most people were telling me," he joked.

Surprisingly, those words seemed to snap Lily out of her panic. "Wait, what? Some people didn't want you to marry Mum? But why? That makes no sense!"

Lips quirking up at Lily's outrage, Harry said dryly, "Well, apparently some witches thought your mother wasn't good enough for me."

"That's crazy," Lily stated. "You're always saying Mum's the best thing that happened to you after us. And if anything, Mum's the one who's too good for you," she added, almost as an afterthought.

"Well, that's just hurtful," Harry replied, feigning pain. Lily shot him a deeply unconvinced look, and that was all it took for Harry to laugh. "But your mother is too good for me," he said fondly.

It was true, after all. Ginny and he fought about it sometimes—not serious fights, of course, as this wasn't quite a serious enough subject for those, but fights all the same. To him, Ginny (and Ron and Hermione, Neville and everyone else too) was the real hero. She had had a choice, unlike him, and she had chosen to fight for what was right. For that, if not the infinite number of other reasons, Ginny deserved everything Harry could give her.

This wasn't about him though, or about Ginny. This was about Lily, their daughter, who was having doubts about her wedding when Harry hadn't seen her happier than the day she had told them Scorpius had proposed.

"Look, Lily, I can't tell you what to do-"

"-that never stopped you before," Lily muttered, and Harry smiled at the memories those words brought up.

"Yes, but you were a child then, not an adult," Harry explained. "And being an adult means you get to make your own decisions."

Lily groaned. "Well, being an adult sucks, can't I just stop?"

"It doesn't work like that," Harry laughed, patting her back comfortingly. "Trust me, if it did, we'd know by now. And you know your mother and I would have kept you and your brothers small and adorable for your entire lives."

"Dad!" Lily protested, but she wanted to laugh, Harry could tell. "Didn't you use to think that we were little monsters though?"

"Ah, but you were adorable little monsters," Harry smiled. "There's a difference."

Lily fell silent for a few moments before her lips quirked up in a fond smile. "We were rather annoying, weren't we?"

"Sometimes," Harry shrugged. "But it was worth it. And this-" he gestured at her wedding dress, the cream silk now rumpled where Lily had laid on it when she had collapsed on the bed "-is worth it too, if you think it is."

Lily rolled her eyes, swatting at Harry's arm. "I was wondering when you'd get back to that."

"Can you blame me?" Harry asked rhetorically. "Come one, Lily, I know it took me some time to accept it-"

"-try forever," Lily muttered almost inaudibly.

"-but I know you love Scorpius," he continued, ignoring the interruption, "and he loves you too. Merlin, last year you were bursting with joy telling us how he'd proposed…"

At that, Lily smiled. It was a beautiful thing, that smile. It bloomed on Lily's face slowly but steadily, and like always, when his daughter was really happy, it stole Harry's breath right out of his lungs.

"He tried to make such a big thing out of it too," she started reminiscing, eyes misty. "Had it all planned out, and I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd known for weeks. He was so excited he nearly dropped the ring, did I tell you that?" she added, playing with said ring as she talked.

Slowly, the scene painted itself in Harry's mind, and the notion that Scorpius Malfoy, who always liked to act like nothing could ever bother him, had been so stressed that he had lost his composure around Lily, made him smile.

"You did," Harry replied, still smiling. "And then you said yes before he could actually ask you," he continued, because he had heard this story before.

"Well, he was taking an awfully long time to find his words," Lily retorted, and the way she was just entirely unapologetic about it was so like something Ginny would do that Harry huffed a fond laugh. "And then he told me he was nervous, and I said, 'what do you have to be nervous about, I love you, of course I'm saying yes'."

She blinked, and Harry had to bit his lips to restrain his smile as he watched realization bloom on her face, any lingering doubts seeming to melt away like snow in the sun.

"That's what you meant, wasn't it, when you told me to 'listen to my heart' and all that?" She sighed.

Harry smirked. "Well, I didn't exactly tell you to 'listen to your heart', but…"

Lily glared at him but Harry just laughed. After her teenage years, he had become somewhat desensitized to that particular expression of hers.

"I'm not saying it," she scowled.

"But," Harry teased, feeling lighter now that most of Lily's doubts had vanished, "I did tell you so. Now come on, you should get ready. If we're late your mother will murder me, and then your grandmother will bring me back just so she can kill me, and that's not even taking into account what your new in-laws might do."

"Scorpius likes you, you know," Lily laughed, though she started to get up from the bed properly, looking at her rumpled dress in disarray.

"He's scared of me, you mean," Harry corrected, though he couldn't quite conceal the fond amusement he felt at those thoughts.

"Can you blame him?" Lily asked with a smirk. "I mean, you do hunt down criminals for a living." She sighed, reaching up to run a hand through her hair and only stopping at the last moment to look at her make-up smudged hands. "This is a disaster," she groaned, sitting at her desk in front of the mirror Ginny had put there a decade ago, when Lily had decided she needed something to help her get her make-up right.

"It's really not," Harry reassured her, moving to stand beside her.

"It is! Look at me," Lily moaned, gesturing at her reflection. "I'm getting married-" and there her voice choked up a little as she cast a Tempus and saw the time, "in half an hour and my hair is a mess, my dress is all, all frumpy, and my face looks like something out of a horror movie!"

She was crying again, and Harry patted her hair comfortingly, absentmindedly thinking that maybe letting their kids watch muggle movies hadn't been such a great idea. "There, there," he said, silently conjuring tissues for her to use as he waited for her tears to dry. "Half an hour is plenty of time, you'll see."

Lily shot up a dubious look, eyes rimmed red.

"I'm serious," Harry continued. "We have magic, you know—don't tell me you've never used that to make your clothes look neater, at least."

With a shaky smile, Lily did just that, running a hand down her now smooth gown. "Scorpius taught me that spell," she explained at Harry's questioning look. "Said it was a trick his dad had taught him."

"I knew it!" Harry whispered before he started coughing to hide his previous reaction.

Lily looked at him oddly, but she must have decided to ignore it because she refocused on her mirror and sighed again. "Now what?"

Harry hummed. "Want me to do your hair?"

"Thanks, Dad, but I don't think that'd be a good idea," Lily laughed. "I wouldn't want you to make this worse than it already is."

"No need for that tone, young woman," Harry retorted teasingly, doing his best impression of Molly. "I'll have you know that just because my cosmetic spells have failed once or twice-"

"-try every time-" Lily coughed.

"-once or twice," Harry repeated, louder, "doesn't mean I can't use a hairbrush. It might not be as sophisticated as what I've seen you were, but you'll look just fine, I swear. I wouldn't lie to you, now, would I?"

Lily pouted, but she nodded as Harry took the brush. She didn't exactly have a choice after all: she had somehow inherited Harry's lack of skill with cosmetic spells (something that never failed to make her brothers laugh, because of course they didn't have the same problem), and she was also unable to do anything more complicated than a ponytail without magic without, it seemed, pulling out half her hair.

Harry, at least, had somehow learned to do tresses and other hairstyles, if only to appease his daughter—Ginny was, of course, equally hopeless when it came to hairstyling. According to her, as long as "it keeps my hair out of my face, what should I care how pretty it looks?", which while a nice philosophy to have, hadn't helped their thirteen-year-old daughter when she had decided to grow out her hair and style it.

He brushed her hair softly until it was smooth, a fiery cascade that ran down to the middle of her back. He had missed this, he realized, and had to blink back a few tears. His little girl was all grown up, and soon he was going to give her away at her own wedding.

"Dad? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Lily. It's nothing, I just got something in my eye, that's all."

"Right…"

"I'm fine," Harry repeated, smiling now as he blinked away the tears. "Now, what do you want me to do with your hair?"

"Can you, ah, err," Lily stuttered, blushing a little as she bit her lips. She ducked her head down a little and busied her hands with trying to find what she needed to remove her smeared make-up, and somehow Harry just knew what she wanted.

"That thing we tried when you were ten, uh?" Harry smirked.

"I liked it!" Lily retorted defensively, cheeks red. "I like it," she repeated. "Please? Could you, err, do that one?"

"Of course," Harry chuckled.

He worked quickly, partly because he knew they didn't have much time, partly because those moves were still so familiar to him he found that his hands fell into old patterns without any conscious thought.

The style Lily wanted had been one of the firsts Harry had taught himself, and as such, it was rather simple. It had been Lily's favorite for many years, but she had never managed to replicate it herself, a fact that Harry knew had driven her mad, nor had she let anyone else do it for her. It had been, as she had said once, their 'father-daughter thing'. Well, one of them anyway.

When Harry was done, Lily smiled widely and Harry couldn't help but smile back just as strongly. She looked queenly like this, the front of her hair braided back into a crown-like tress that circled her head.

"There, I'm done," Harry said through the thick mess of emotions lodged in his throat.

Hesitantly, carefully, and in a move that echoed so strongly with the little girl she had once been that Harry had to blink the echo away, Lilly reached up to touch her hair.

"Thanks," she said, "it's perfect." She licked her lips and put her hands on her lap. "Would you—I mean, could you do my make-up too?"

Harry almost laughed. "You sure you want to trust me with that?" he asked even as he accepted the small brushes and the kit of eyeshadows.

Lily rolled her eyes. "I figure you let me practice on you enough to at least have some idea about what you're doing," she replied, a teasing edge to her smirk as she reached for her lipstick.

"Well, I could certainly recreate one of those wonderful styles for you," Harry teased. "I mean, I seem to remember very clearly that you liked to just rub glitter all over my face and call it art."

Lily blushed. "Dad, don't you dare!" Her hands twitched toward the make-up she had handed her father, but Harry moved out of the way.

"Just turn around," he laughed, "and I'll try not to make you look like a panda or something."

Lily burst into laughter so suddenly even she looked surprised. "Sorry, sorry," she said through her chuckles, "I just remembered that time when I… and you looked…" She dissolved into laughter again, and Harry was glad she wasn't wearing any make-up yet because it would have been ruined yet again as Lily found herself wiping tears off her face.

"Yes, yes, and it was very funny, you laughed at me then too," he said, rolling his eyes at the memory. It had been Lily's first try at putting on eyeliner on someone, and to say that by the end Harry had looked like a goth panda would be the nice way to put it. "Now stay still, I would want to poke out your eyes."

Lily laughed again, but she didn't move. This too was familiar territory. Had anyone told him, decades ago, that he'd end up so good at applying make-up and styling hair, he'd have probably sent them to St Mungo's, but honestly, Harry didn't think he could dream up a better way to spend his time than finding ways to make his kids happy.

And if that required playing the role of Lily's make-up doll, or asking Fleur and Ginny for incredibly awkward beauty tips (he'd have asked Hermione, but his best-friend barely believed in make-up, and the one time he'd tried asking he had been lectured for three hours on animal testing and the cruelty thereof), well he'd do it a thousand times over.

"You could do this yourself, you know," he told her as he carefully applied the mascara and tried not to smear the golden eyeshadow he had put on her eyelids first.

"I know," Lily replied. "But I wanted you to do it."

She was using her mother's 'that's how it is and if you don't like it you can leave' tone, so Harry simply hummed tunelessly and completed his assigned task.

"There, all done now," he said, stepping back.

"How do I look?" Lily asked brightly.

"Like an angel," Harry assured her.

"You're biased, though," she pouted. It made the red of her lips stand out sharply against her pale skin, and combined with her red hair and creamy gown, Harry thought that she indeed looked like some kind of otherworldly vision.

"Don't worry, I'm pretty sure your fiancé is the same way," he retorted amusedly. "But really, you look perfect. Just like your mother," he added.

Lily beamed. "I did get the good genes from her side of the family."

"You got the best out of the both of us," Harry corrected, snorting a little.

Lily fell silent at that, her green eyes scrutinizing Harry's face sharply. "Hmm," she said, "I guess I did." She tucked her wand away against her ankle as she slipped on her heels, and stood up.

"Now go, and knock them dead," Harry said, voice full of emotions as he gestured to the door.

"That'd be a terrible way to start the wedding, Dad," Lily replied dryly, but her eyes were laughing. "Also, you're walking with me, remember?"

"I remember," Harry said, "but I always wanted to say that."

Lily laughed, and together they pushed the doors open and walked off toward where the ceremony was starting to happen.

"Ready?" Harry asked as he offered his daughter his arm.

"Ready," Lily confirmed with a smile bright enough to put out the sun. She sounded nervous still, but she was almost vibrating with excitement.

"Then let's get going," Harry replied.

Whatever would happen now, as long as it kept Lily smiling that way, Harry wouldn't complain.

(bonus)

"So, Potter, how does it feel to know you're going to be related to me now?"

Harry snorted. He didn't need to turn around to recognize the speaker; the familiar drawl had done that all on its own.

"How does it feel to know you're going to be related to a Weasley?" Ginny countered, sliding in beside Harry like she belonged there (which she did). She was smirking, an almost cruel glint flittering in her eyes.

Draco looked as though he had bitten into something sour, but Astoria laughed. "She got you there, dear," she said, patting at Draco's arm comfortingly.

Draco huffed, but he looked at his wife fondly, before he rolled his eyes and refocused on Harry and Ginny.

"Well, I guess that at least family dinners won't be boring anymore," he said, sounding so forlorn at the thought that Harry had to bite back his laughter.

"That is true," he admitted.

Somewhere close, Scorpius and Lily were dancing. Harry knew this because he could hear Lily's laughter, clear as bells, echo through the air.

"As long as they're happy," he finally sighed.

"As long as they're happy," Draco agreed, and as Ginny and Astoria looked on approvingly, the two men shook hands.

"See? I'm telling you, in ten years they'll even be friends," Astoria whispered into Ginny's ear over her glass.

"Ten? Please, we can make it happen in five, at most," Ginny retorted, laughing.

Harry and Draco shared a panicked look, and Ginny and Astoria laughed.

"To new family," Ginny said with a wink as she toasted her glass against Astoria's.

"To new family," Astoria toasted back, smiling as she downed her drink after that.

"Now come on," Ginny said, putting down her empty glass in a nearby tray, "you can keep my husband company while I dance with my new son-in-law, and your husband can dance with my daughter."

"That," Astoria replied, feeling oddly confident, "sounds like an amazing idea."

"You'll find that I'm full of those," Ginny said, waving Harry over. Moments later, they were all walking to the dancefloor.

"Your wife is, uh," Astoria stuttered at Harry as they stood on the fringes of the dancing, unsure of how to properly describe the whirlwind that Ginny Potter had just been.

"She's quite something, isn't she?" Harry laughed, eyes full of fond affection.

Astoria snorted, eyes drawn to where her son awkwardly tried to twirl said woman as the redhead danced something entirely out of tune to the song currently being played. "That she is," she said. "That she is."

For some reason, that made Harry laugh again. "Don't worry, Lily's not quite as wild as my wife. Well, not always," he snickered, pointing to where Lily was literally dancing circles around Astoria's increasingly bewildered husband.

Astoria blinked, lips twitching up as she took in the sight. "Should I rescue him?"

"Well, you could, but Lily's harmless, really. Besides, isn't this more fun?"

Despite herself, Astoria found herself huffing out a laugh. "Yes… Yes, I guess it is."

"Besides, I'm sure they'll switch when this song ends, and we wouldn't want to miss that," Harry added with a wink, making Astoria notice that the two pairs were indeed getting closer to each other.

She laughed again. Harry was right—this wasn't something she wanted to miss. Not for all the riches in the world.