"And you know this is only for emergencies, right?" Lily nodded her head vigorously as she stared at the piece of plastic in her father's hand. "And that 'emergency' doesn't mean you need shoes to match that skirt or a skirt to match those shoes *Now*, right?" Another quick nod of her red-haired head.
Harry looked carefully at the credit card he was considering giving to his youngest child. It was her birthday after all, and she was turning sixteen. He supposed she was responsible enough to be trusted with the little piece of plastic but there was just something about her perfectly manicured appearance that worried him.
"Is breaking a nail and emergency?" He tested. Lily raised an eyebrow at her father.
"No," She said carefully.
"So if you break a nail, what do you do with your credit card?" The teenage girl sighed and rolled her eyes.
"Leave it tucked safely in my wallet deep inside my purse without using it to get a manicure." She spoke in a monotone that did not leave Harry with the confidence that she would actually do as she said. He pulled the card closer to himself.
"I just don't know if you are quite ready for a credit card." He said staring at the name 'Lily L Potter' raised on the bottom of the card.
"But dad!" Lily whined.
"I didn't have a credit card until I was twenty, you know, and I survived."
"Yeah, I know and you had to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs and have all hand-me-down clothes," She recited the lecture she heard anytime she wanted something that her father wasn't quite ready to give her. "And that is why you want to give me a credit card, because you know that you would have wanted one when you were sixteen because you wish grandma and grandpa Potter had been there to give you one. I get it dad, I really do, please just give me the card." The teenager started to regress back to being a toddler as she whined.
"You're right and I didn't even have any muggle money when I was your age." Lily sighed and rolled her eyes again.
"But you had plenty of wizard money so that point is entirely moot. Dad," She whined. "Most parents just stick with the normal 'when I was your age i had to walk up hill both ways in the snow, with no shoes to get to school' and then give in."
"But that is entirely untrue." Lily sighed.
"That's the point. Please just give me my credit card. James and Albus got theirs on their birthdays and they are boys, you should trust me way more than you trusted them." Harry chuckled.
"In most things I do trust you more than I trust them, however, when it comes to money and you, I am always going to be cautious." Lily groaned.
"I promise I will never use it even if I am stuck in the middle of nowhere and the only way I could get home was a single taxi. I will walk instead of using the card, I promise."
"Well if you are that adverse to using it, then you don't really need it at all." Harry grinned at the groan his teasing elicited.
"Daddy," Lily whined.
"Alright, alright, you can have the silly card." He held the plastic out and after a small game of tug-of-war and another whine, he let it go.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Lily jumped up and hugged him before skipping off to her room, probably to gloat to her friends about her latest present. Harry went in the opposite direction to his wife's study where he found her hunched over a piece of paper.
"So how did the credit card giving go?" She asked looking up from her writing.
"As well as to be expected I guess." Harry went to look out the window. "When did lily grow up?" He asked. "It seems like just yesterday that I was teaching her to ride a bike and sending her off to Hogwarts for the first time. Now I'm handing her a credit card which I'm sure she will use for more than just emergencies." Ginny laughed and went to wrap her arms around her husband.
"That's what children do, dear, they grow up, we just try to get them to stay young as long as we can before letting them go." The two stared out the window together, thinking of their children.