September 5th 2009
Draco and Harry were sitting on the stoop of their house, each with a daughter standing in front of them. It had taken a while to get them out of the door that morning, but Draco and Harry had both made sure to get an early start to the day. They were not going to be responsible for their kids missing the first day of school because they missed the taxi.
The girls were not starting primary school just yet, but they were heading to their first day of preschool. This was the first Harry and Draco were really going to be separated from their daughters in the nearly four years since they had been born. Their careers had not even interfered with their raising of the girls. Draco had taken a smaller position at St. Mungo's while Harry had quit his job as an auror six months after they were born. He had decided it wasn't worth the risk anymore, and they had no need for the money. Draco had too much love for his position to completely leave it, though he only worked part time now. With the kids going to preschool during the day now, Draco would be increasing his hours at Mungo's. Harry, meanwhile, was still unsure of what he was going to do while the girls were gone.
"Promise me you'll behave," Harry said as he tucked Lyra's shirt in for a third time. She kept deliberately untucking it. He didn't know why he bothered. The minute she got to school she would untuck it again.
"I pwomise daddy," She said with a huff.
"What do you do if another kid wants to play with you?"
"I let them," She sighed.
"If they want to play with your toys?"
She let out a dramatic sigh and stomped her foot, "I let them play with my toys."
"That's my girl," Harry said proudly, kissing her forehead.
She pretended to wipe the kiss off her forehead like she always did, but she secretly loved the attention she got from her dad.
"Are you nervous?" Draco asked Lily gently.
Lily tugged at the sleeves of her blouse and looked down. She nodded but didn't say anything. Draco held his arms out and she quietly moved into his reach. He pulled her up into his lap and hugged her close, resting his chin on her auburn hair, "You're going to be just fine, Lily girl. What are you going to do if someone says something mean?"
"Ignore them."
Draco murmured under his breath, "And if Lyra tugs your hair or takes your toy?"
"Ask her to stop."
"That's my girl. I know you'll be just fine," He kissed her cheek and let her down, "Daddy and I will pick you up later, okay?"
She nodded, "Okay."
The yellow taxi that picked up for the daycare turned around the corner and pulled up to their curb. Draco and Harry stood, taking their daughters' hands and leading them up to the car as the driver got out and held the door open. A few car seats waited for them in the back.
"Thank you, we can put them in," Harry dismissed the driver politely. He scooped Lyra up and looked at her, "You be good to your sister, okay?"
"Okay daddy," Lyra shrugged without interest.
"Can I get a hug before you go off to school and leave daddy behind to twiddle his thumbs all day?" Harry asked kindly.
Lyra grinned and threw her arms around his neck and made a loud noise as she squished herself close to him.
"I love you my Lyra,"
"I love you too Daddy!" Lyra said happily before Harry put her in the car seat.
Draco had picked up Lily and walked around to the other side of the cab. Lily was frowning and shaking her head as he opened the door.
"What's wrong Lily girl?"
"I don't wanna go," She whined and buried her face into her dad's shoulder.
He ran his hand against her back, "I know sweetheart, I know. But you'll be home before you know it. As soon as school is done you'll be back with us. I love you my girl."
"I love you daddy," She whimpered as she sniffled, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"I gotta put you in the car now, honey, you gotta let go."
She slowly pulled away and looked at Draco. He wiped the tears off her cheeks and kissed each one before putting her into the car seat. He fastened her in and reminded her one last time that he loved her before shutting the door.
Draco returned to Harry's side, putting his arm around his waist as they waved goodbye through the window as the car pulled away. They stood there quietly for a moment as they watched the car pull out of sight.
"Do you think they'll be okay?" Harry asked.
"I really hope so. But I know Lily's going to cry, probably a lot."
"Oh, I know she will. As long as we don't get a call insisting we pick her up because she's had a meltdown, I'll be relieved. The same for Lyra. I don't want to get a call saying she's given a kid a black eye because they looked at her funny."
Draco cracked, laughing hard for several moments before remembering his daughters were gone for the next several hours. He sighed and turned to Harry; they exchanged a look for a moment before Draco whimpered and wrapped his arms around Harry, holding him tight. They held each other for a good long moment, trying to calm themselves down. Harry was the first to speak, "It's a good thing you don't work today, huh?"
Draco nodded slowly, "We can just mope in the house all day until we pick them up."
Harry laughed, "We can't just sit around and be miserable all day. Only half the day."
"So we should just get the moping out of the way now?" Draco asked softly.
"Yes," Harry let go of Draco and took his hand and lead him back into the house. They headed straight back upstairs and into their bedroom. As usual, they hadn't bothered to make the bed. They crawled back under the covers and Harry wrapped himself around his husband. While they were both struggling with saying goodbye to their daughters for the first time, he knew that it was Draco who was having the hardest time. They lay there, hardly talking, for a couple hours. Every once in a while one of them would drift asleep and the other would have to nudge them awake. Finally, about mid afternoon Harry made the executive decision that it was time to stop being sad and get to living.
"They're going to need to see their dads with a stiff upper lip. They can't know how upset we were to see them go," Harry reasoned as they climbed back out of bed.
"You're right, you're right," Draco sighed as they headed downstairs.
Sure enough, they were able to pull themselves together by the time they went to pick up the girls. They waited out in front of the school, leaning against the car at the curb, watching the front doors patiently. Without saying a word, Harry reached out and took Draco's hand in his. A bell rang and a few adults opened the front doors and monitored the stream of small children walking out. Their eyes darted over the crowd of kids, looking for their girls.
Several other parents lined the sidewalk and picked up their children as they surged forward into their caregivers' arms.
"There's Lyra!" Harry stood up straighter, spotting his dark haired daughter in the crowd. She looked up and spotted her dad and pushed her way through the crowd shouting at the top of her lungs, "Daddies!" They let go of each other's hands and both crouched down as she ran into their arms. They encircled her in their arms and she squealed with delight.
"How was your first day?" Harry asked at the same time as Draco chimed in, "Where's your sister?"
"Oh, she's in da office," Lyra waved off lazily.
Draco and Harry exchanged a look. Harry nodded as Draco raised a brow. Without needing to talk, Draco agreed to go and get her. Harry waited with Lyra, "What happened to your sister?"
"I dunno. Someone cut up her drawing."
"You didn't cut up her drawing did you?"
"No daddy."
"Do I need to remind you that I have special powers that let me know when you're lying?" Harry asked gently. Truthfully, he had no ability to read minds. But Harry still pretended that he could read minds with her, knowing that the belief of it was enough to scare her into confessing most of the time.
But Lyra stood her ground, "I'm not a fibber."
She rarely would hold her ground this long on a lie. He nodded slowly, believing her wholeheartedly. "When her drawing got torn up what did she do?"
"Duh, cry."
"And what did you do?"
Lyra looked away and didn't respond.
"Lyra," Harry said sternly.
She sighed and looked back at her dad, "Not'ing. I di'n't do not'ing."
Harry shook his head, "I'm disappointed in you, Lyra. You're supposed to support your sister and be there for her. How many times do we have to tell you?"
"I can't help it daddy. She's a crybaby. I hate it." Lyra pouted.
Harry shook his head, "I don't care if she's a crybaby. You still have to be there for her. When Mr. Squishy got ripped and you got upset, who tried to fix it?"
"Lily did."
"When you lost your toy broom who helped you calm down long enough to look for it?"
Lyra groaned, "Lily did."
"So, what are you going to do the next time your sister has her feelings hurt?"
Lyra shrugged.
"Well, here's a suggestion," Harry said plainly, "Start with a hug and then try to help however you can. Get tape to piece her drawing back together, or whatever the case may be."
"Fiiiine. Can we go home now?" She asked impatiently.
"As soon as daddy comes back with your sister, but I can buckle you in now if you like."
"Yes p'ease," She insisted.
Harry put her into the carseat and shut the door behind him just as Draco reappeared with Lily in his arms. Her face was buried in her dad's chest. Draco mouthed, "It's okay." Harry nodded as he approached them. Draco watched as Harry tucked Lily's hair behind her ear.
"Hi my girl," Harry murmured softly, "I heard you've had a rough day."
"Mhmm."
"I'm sorry honey bee, is there anything I can do to make it better?"
She hummed in thought for a moment before finally sitting up straight, "Ice cweam?"
Draco and Harry exchanged a look before both replying, "Sure."
She sniffed and smiled ever-so-slightly, "Thanks daddies." She leaned back against Draco's chest, clearly too spent to carry the conversation on any longer. Harry and Draco exchanged a small smile between themselves before getting Lily into the car and heading home
October 6th, 2009
"Daddies!" Lily and Lyra shouted as they burst through the front door that afternoon. Harry and Draco were absently reading side by side on the couch when they came through the front door. The girls launched themselves onto their dads, who both pretended that it hurt with pathetically fake groans of agony. The girls laughed loudly at this, as they always did.
It had been a month since they started preschool, and they had all finally found their rhythm and schedule. Draco worked a few hours while they were in school, coming home just twenty minutes before the kids were dropped off at home by the school. Harry spent most of his free time every day reading and writing. He had started to feel less educated than his husband and had started reading the muggle classics that he had never been taught. He struggled with them but had been keeping notes to keep track of everything. Hermione would be delighted when he saw her next and mentioned it. With everyone fretting about with their own families, it had become harder and harder to see each other. They usually only got a chance to catch up on the holidays. Thankfully, this meant he would see her and Ron no later than Christmas.
Every day the kids came home and would dive straight into their fathers and tell them all about their day. It was often the time of day where Harry and Draco smiled and laughed the most.
"Look what Jessie help me color today!" Lily said excitedly, pulling out a folded drawing from her adorably small backpack. She held it out to Draco who looked at it curiously. It was evident from the thick black outline beneath the horrendous scrawls of crayon and marker was supposed to be a recognizable character. But he had never seen it before.
"Oh I love it sweetheart," Draco said automatically.
"Y'know who it is daddy?"
"No, am I supposed to?"
"Jessie says all girls know Princess Belle. She was in a movie. Can we watch it?"
"Firstly," Draco clarified, "I'm not a girl, so that would explain why I did not know her. Secondly, what's this movie called?"
"No, no," Lyra interrupted from where she sat on Harry's lap, "I don't wanna watch Beauty and the Beast, I wanna watch Lion King!"
"We can watch both, probably," Harry said calmly. "Daddy and I will look into it and make sure they're appropriate for you to watch."
"Daddy, they're kids movies. My fwiend Beck told me about Lion King and it sounds soooo much cooler than Lily's silly movie."
"That's enough, Lyra," Harry warned, noticing Lily's smile fade into a frown, "Don't be mean. We'll watch both of them, okay? Should we go to the video store and watch them tonight?"
The girls sat up straight at this. Neither had hoped they would be so lucky as to watch these films tonight. They were eager to understand what their friends were talking about, to be able to talk about the characters as they drew them or played out scenes. "Yes p'ease!" Lily chimed in just as Lyra shouted, "LET'S GOOO!"
Draco and Harry both laughed and within an hour found themselves camped out on the living room floor. It had been a very long time since they had watched a film together. The girls had watched one of Harry's favorite childhood films, ET, earlier that year as their first film experience. It had traumatized Lily for a good month. She had been convinced that there were aliens everywhere. Since then, they had hesitated introducing them to any other films. But one look at the tapes at the rental store proved that the movies they so desperately wanted to watch were likely tame enough for them to handle.
Harry had insisted on buying a small television set shortly after they had purchased their house. It was a novelty from his childhood he sorely missed. Dudley usually hogged the five or six different televisions around 4 Privet Drive, but every once in awhile he got to watch something. He could get away with a film or two at Mrs. Figg's when she was feeling particularly bad for how Harry was being treated at home. Once in awhile he would be left alone while the Dursleys were gone and he could steal one of Dudley's VHS tapes and watch a bit at a time. Consequently, he had a deep love of film that he had not been able to indulge for most of his young life. So he had taught Draco what a television was and tried to explain what movies were. It had been tricky at first, but eventually he seemed to grasp the concept and enjoyed his first film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, immensely.
When they came home from the rental store, Lyra demanded they watch Lion King first. Lily, ever the team player, was perfectly okay with this. The two lay on their stomachs in front of the television, their heads propped up on their hands and a bowl of popcorn remaining fairly untouched in front of them. Harry took the opportunity to snap a photograph of the girls, knowing it would be a long time before they peacefully existed side by side again. Neither noticed the sound of the shutter, too entranced by the story unfolding on the small screen. He set it aside to develop later in the potion that allowed the photo to move.
He exchanged a smile with his husband. It was always a relief when the girls actually did well together. Since their birth they had been at odds. While Molly had told them that Fred and George had always needed to share a crib to stop crying, Harry found the opposite to be true with his twins. They had had a tendency to cry harder when they were next to their twin. They seemed destined to butt heads from the beginning.
Harry sat beside Draco, just behind the girls, and rested his head on his husband's shoulder. He hadn't expected much out of a film that had been recommended by a four year old, but he quickly found himself entranced with the story. Draco had to stop himself from laughing at Harry by the end of it. As Simba walked up pride rock at the end, Harry was crying profusely. Draco wrapped an arm around Harry and kissed his hair. He adored Harry, finding his reaction to a kids movie quite endearing.
Lily dutifully hit the rewind button on the VCR before turning around and asking her sister for a hug. Harry and Draco watched in shocked astonishment as the girls hugged each other willingly. Both had apparently been crying most of the film. Neither father had noticed as it had been largely silent tears. Lyra held her sister longer than either dad expected before letting go and wiping at her cheeks, "I hate tears. I don't want to cry."
"It's okay to cry, Lyra," Lily assured her. She turned and looked at Harry, "See? Daddy cried. It's okay to cry if daddy cries too."
Lyra looked over at her dad in disbelief and smiled weakly.
"It's true," Harry said, "It's okay to cry at things, even if they are happy things."
Draco cracked a grin and said to Lyra, "When your first word was 'dad' he immediately started sobbing."
Lyra giggled, relieved that she wasn't silly for getting emotional over an animated lion. She decided then and there that it was the best movie ever. Lily, however, felt the need to say, "I dunno, we haven' seen the next one yet. Maybe it's better."
"No, no movie is better," Lyra said fiercely as the movie popped out. She tucked it back in its case, "I just know Beauty and the Beast will not be gooder than Lion King."
Lily sighed as she put her movie pick in the VCR, "I wanna watch it."
"We can watch," Lyra relented, "But it won't be gooder."
"Lyra," Harry spoke in his dad tone. She glanced over her shoulder at him and sighed angrily. She had been officially warned. She laid down on the floor again as the next movie started up. She looked incredibly ambivalent for the first half of the film while Lily seemed to grow more and more entranced with it.
Harry didn't mind the movie, he thought it was gorgeous. He hadn't seen a lot of animated films as a kid. The artistry of both films impressed him. However, he found his eyes wandering away from the film more than once. He kept glancing at his daughters to make sure they were behaving, but he also kept casting a glance toward his husband. He noticed Draco was unable to take his eyes off the movie. Draco was utterly engrossed with the story, taking to it more than he had the other films. He found that by the end of the film both Lily and Draco were getting emotional. Draco was tearing up and his face had flushed red while Lily was full on sobbing on the floor. Lyra was quietly laughing at her sister. Harry was just grateful she wasn't outright mocking her.
When the credits began to roll, Lily turned and looked at Lyra with a big grin, "That was so good!"
Lyra shrugged, "Yeah, I guess. Lion King is still gooder."
"Both made me cry."
"This one didn' make me cry."
"But it was so sad! She thought he was asleep fowever!"
"I knew he would wake up."
Lily shook her head, "Maybe you didn't cry, but it was still good."
"Yeah, it was good. I guess."
Lily seemed to lose her interest in talking to her sister after that and went off to play with her dolls in the corner. Harry and Draco wondered if the girls would ever be as clothes as other twins were. They certainly hoped so. The constant head butting was driving them both insane.
November 14th, 2009
It was a mellow, laid back Saturday in the Potter-Malfoy household. It was cold outside, so the girls were staying inside to play. Harry was doing his best to keep Lyra occupied. She tended to get a bit destructive if left to her own devices for long. So, naturally, this meant getting her to practice on her toy broom. Lily, meanwhile, was playing quietly without supervision in her bedroom. She was always mild mannered and could be trusted to behave herself. Unlike Lyra, she could be left alone without any fear of her causing problems.
Lyra repeatedly zoomed past their bedroom, ignoring her sister as she followed her dad's drills. He would have her retrieve random items from around the house and bring them back to him in the dining room. After she had collected ten items he would make her return them to the right place. It was on one of these return routes to the upstairs office that Harry and Draco heard a loud wail come from upstairs. They both bolted up the stairs. On the landing they saw the toy racing broom discarded on the ground and heard Lyra yelling in her room.
The protective fathers rushed in and found quite the scene. Lily had apparently been in the middle of a tea party with some of her stuffed animals on the floor. Her plastic tea cups stood empty in front of her small army of stuffed animals. Lyra was standing just outside this circle and shouting at her twin who was sobbing hysterically, "Stop it Lily! You crying made me fall off my broom!"
Harry intervened and pulled Lyra gently out of the room, "Lyra, you're not helping." He knelt in the hall in front of her and checked for scrapes from her fall. She seemed injury free, just frustrated.
Draco crouched down next to Lily and quietly asked her why she was crying. Lily sniffled and her wails diminished into whimpers, "I w-w-was having tea with my teddies and Omelet said I was - I was - a big cry baby!"
Harry, hearing this easily from the hall turned to Lyra and frowned. She held up her hands, "It wasn't me! I went in after she started crying."
"Oh that wasn't very nice, Omelet," Draco said sternly toward the Humpty Dumpty plush that stared blankly at them from the floor. "Can you please apologize to Lily?" He asked the egg.
Lily cried louder, "He won't apo-wo-jiii—" Her word pittered out into a wailing cry.
Lyra groaned irritably, covering her ears, "I can't take it! Her crying is driving me nuts!" Harry was inclined to agree, but didn't say so. Lily was a sensitive child, but this seemed like a whole new level of ridiculousness. Harry knew Lyra would continue getting mad at her sister if they stayed there any longer. He scooped her up and brought her back downstairs, grabbing the broom on the way. She settled down pretty quickly once he had her back on the broom and zipping between the living room and kitchen.
Lily, meanwhile, was proving harder to soothe . "He said he doesn't want to apologize?"
"Y-yes! He called me a big fat crybaby and said he wouldn't take it back!"
"Omelet, that's very rude. I'm afraid you need a time out to think about what you've said," Draco reasoned. He stood and picked up the toy and put it on the top shelf of their rather large bookshelf. He told him off one last time, "You can come down when you have thought about what you've done and are ready to apologize."
He looked back at Lily as she was wiping away the last of her tears. She smiled up at her father, "Thank you daddy."
He knelt down in front of her and she immediately ran over to hug him tight. He kissed her cheek before letting her go. He looked down at her and smiled sadly, "You know, some people are like Omelet and say hurtful things to and about us without having a reason and without apologizing."
"They do?"
"All the time. But you know what I learned to do a long time ago?"
"No, what?"
"Just let the cruel words roll off you. Nobody can tell you who you are, you decide that for yourself. So when someone says something hurtful just remind yourself that they don't know you, that they are blind to how wonderful you truly are. It might also help to remember that even if mean people don't like you, your daddies will love you forever."
She smiled at this and hugged her dad once more before going back to her tea party. Draco started to stand so he could get back to reading through a case file, but Lily had other plans. "Do you wanna come to my tea party daddy?" He hesitated but when she looked at him with those puppy dog eyes he gave in and plopped down in Omelet's spot on the floor. Within an hour he had drank gallons of invisible tea and was wearing a princess crown.
