Draco puts his plate into the dishwasher and turns to take the youngest children up to bed when he realises that thirteen sets of eyes are trained at him expectantly.
"What?" He asks, confused. Luna smiles and points to the brightly coloured chart on the wall. It is a simple piece of white cardboard that his wife has decorated, with help of the youngest, and it has all their names in a neat list, next to five slightly crooked squares in different colours. All the squares have little cardboard animals placed in them, one for each colour. Apart from the top row, neatly labelled "daddy", which is empty. Draco is not really excited about the idea to do this, but they have struggled for months to get a few of their children to eat their veggies, and this scheme actually works… therefore, he puts a smile on his face and goes over to the chart.
He feels ridiculous as he picks up five little dragons that Elara has drawn and Beatrice has cut out, each with a magnet on the back, and places them carefully on the chart, listing what he's eaten during the day as he does. It's a routine that Luna has already done while he put away the dishes. Five half-moons have been put beneath his empty row.
"Let's see" he says. "For breakfast today I had a yellow banana" he places the yellow dragon in the yellow square. "For lunch, I had a red apple and there was green lettuce in my sandwich." He puts two more dragons in their places. "Then for dinner, I had some carrots" the orange dragon is put up "and for dessert, we all had grapes, so that's my blue." The last dragon is placed and the chart is full. Then he turns back to his beaming children.
"Alright" he says, doing his best to pretend to be cheerful, "On three. One… two… three…"
And as he leads his children through the "today I ate a rainbow"-song, he can't help but feel warmth bloom in his chest. His old school friends would laugh their arses off at him, but his wife and children are beaming. And really, what's a bit of embarrassment when that is his reward?