The first time Rose fell over, I laughed.
She hadn't hurt herself, of course she hadn't, and if she had I would hardly recall the incident with such amusement as I do now. Eighteen months old and bandy-legged, she had wobbled uncertainly around the living room, the swollen belly only toddlers can pull off jutting out in front of her, her wispy russet curls framing chubby pink cheeks, her big blue eyes full of wonder at the joy of this new discovery, this motility.
The coffee table was her undoing.
We were alone in the house, my daughter and I, Hermione having left a few hours before to shop with my mother. She had pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth, a promise, and whispered tightly in my ear, "Be good." What sort of husband has to be told by his wife to be good? But when I voiced this to her she had simply looked at me, an eyebrow raised in answer.
I suppose she has a point, to a certain extent. Last time she left Harry and me babysitting Rosie she came back to find Rosie's dinner on the walls, in our hair, smeared across Rose's beaming cheeks. Everywhere apart from in her belly, which, I suppose, was the general idea. It's not that I'm irresponsible, though, far from it. I just about have a heart attack every time Rose, crawling on her hands and knees, lingers too near to the electrical sockets at Hermione's parents' house. Before she began to eat solids I would obsessively pulverise her food so that not a single chunk remained for her to potentially choke on. The first time Harry held her I nearly hexed him for not holding her in the specific way I had instructed him, even though James was nearly three by then. I'm dreading the teenage years already. My daughter won't be allowed to do a thing.
So it's not as though I'm irresponsible. It's simply that my daughter has weaved a spell of her own over me. Every time she smiles my heart catches. When she babbles, the syllables running together like a string of bright beads, I listen as if she's telling me the most important thing in the world. If she laughs I am lost, listening to the way the happiness seems to catch on hermouth as it exits so that her smile is pulled wider. And every time she does something bad, something she knows is naughty, I laugh at the expression she pulls even as I'm telling her off. Every single time.
So like I said, when she collided with the smooth dark oak of the table, I laughed. Not because she had fallen over, you understand. I laughed at the soft thud her bottom made when it connected with the plush carpeting. I laughed at the way her mouth had rounded into a perfect O of surprise, her eyes as wide and flat as a Galleon. I laughed at the noise she made as she connected with the earth, a loud squealing 'ooh!' of surprise. And, most of all, I laughed at the way that afterwards, she simply sat there, looking bewilderedly around her as if she simply could not understand how she had come to be sitting here when just seconds before she had been upright.
Which is why, when Hermione came home minutes later, she found the two of us sitting on the floor, my arms laced tightly around my daughter as she smiled as she laughed from the bottom of her little heart.
Author's Note
Yes, I know this is practically a drabble but I just felt like writing it, as I've gone into a complete Let's-basically-become-Ron-Weasley-and-detail-every-moment-of-his-life-after-Deathly-Hallows tangent lately, and I like to think that in spite of his stupidity and tactlessness at times, he would be a very loving father.