THC, Round 5, Standing in for Gryffindor, Muggle Studies, Standard.

Prompts: [Colour] Orange; [Speech] "For the third and final time, yes"

Word Count: 1128

Beta(s): secretfanficlover, Copper's Mama, CupCakeyyy.

Being a parent was one of the joys in life that everybody raves about. They discuss when their little joy first walked, their first words, their first accidental magic… their first everything. Well, not everything. They don't talk about the first sleepless night, the first illness, the first injury, or the first time your child ends up a different colour. They leave that for the new parents to discover on their own.

Hermione and Ron both adjusted to the weird sleeping schedule Rose had made for herself. Ron would stay up later with Rose until she fell asleep and would be on duty until 3 am. And Hermione would do the morning shift. Usually meaning she was awake at 5 am with their three-month-old.

This routine they had sorted out. Except for rare occasions when they started to go back to work. Hermione went back first for one day a week, with Ron quickly following a three-day-a-week schedule.

"'Mione, I have an early meeting tomorrow morning; can we swap shifts?" Ron asked one afternoon.

Hermione checked the schedule, she wasn't due to work the following day. "What time is your meeting?"

"9 am."

That would give her enough time to sleep if she took his 'night time shift' and he took her morning shift. "Of course, that's fine."

"Are you sure?"

"For the second time, yes, that's fine. I'm not going to work tomorrow anyway."

He leant forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "You're amazing."

However, other firsts in Rose's life weren't explicitly that calm.

The first time Rose fell ill, seriously ill, was when she got hand-foot-and-mouth disease; she was just nine months old. It was scary. Both Ron and Hermione took two weeks off work - even though they worked part time, they didn't want to leave Rose alone. Of course, there was a potion that helped and practically cured it, but little Rose still had a few ulcers for a couple of days. It wasn't nice and they didn't ever want that to be repeated.

Eventually, things went back to normal. Hermione and Ron fell into the habit of documenting all of the wonderful firsts of their daughter; the fact that she said Dada at ten months and by eleven months knew who her Dada was. The fact that she was crawling all over the house around the same time, but managed to walk when neither of them were watching her. That had been a fright. And the most fun one was when she started learning more words and asking for objects, such as milk, food, and Mama.

So when Hermione became pregnant with their second child, they didn't expect to have any more exciting firsts from Rose; afterall, she was nearly two. They knew there would be a couple here and there, but she had done most things.

Of course, their little angel had to prove them wrong.

Ron swears he had only turned away for a second when the nearly two-year-old disappeared. He instantly notified Hermione that she had gone 'walkies' away from him.

Hermione wasn't worried, they were having a party at the time with thirteen guests, her daughter likely wanted to play with one of them or a cousin. Yet, as she walked around to look for her, she found that it wasn't that easy.

"Have you seen Rose?" she asked Harry who was holding a sleeping Albus in his arms.

"Sorry, no," he replied quickly despite the music being loud.

Hermione nodded and slipped out her wand, ready to lower the music and ask if anybody knew where her daughter was when…

"OH MY MERLIN!" exclaimed George in pure delight. "How did you manage that, Rosie?"

Hermione followed his voice to see what had made him shout out in shock. There was her darling daughter, covered from head to toe in bright orange paint.

"Where did you get that?" Hermione asked, trying to work out how to react to this.

Rose picked up the nearly empty paint tin. "It's orange water, Mummy."

Hermione looked at the tin and mentally wished she had locked the cupboard door where they were storing the paint for the new nursery. Orange walls had been the colour she and Ron had agreed on, however, neither of them had had the chance to paint the third bedroom yet; they knew that he or she wouldn't be going straight into that room anyway.

Quickly waving her wand, she removed the paint and put it back into the tin. However… she must have done something wrong because while Rose was paint-free, her skin was still orange.

"Time for a bath," she declared, pocketing her wand and picking up Rose.

"I don't wanna bath!" Rose complained as she was carried up the stairs.

"Rosie, you're orange," Hermione reasoned. Usually Rose loved her baths but only when there weren't lots of guests for her to play with.

Rose began to wiggle. "I stay orange! I stay orange!"

"No, you're having a bath. I don't want you to be permanently orange."

A low moan which started to get higher and louder rumbled from Rose's mouth. She had had her fair share of little tantrums, but that's the last thing Hermione wanted while there were lurking ears not too far from them.

"No bath!" Rose argued and kicked her tiny feet defiantly.

Hermione held her daughter's gaze with steady eyes, taking a breath before stating calmly, "For the third and final time, yes, you are having a bath."

A loud grunt and Rose fell silent. "A little one?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, just a little one."

Quickly running the bath, she undressed the orange girl and was mildly thankful that she wasn't orange all over, just where her skin had been exposed to the paint. While waiting for the tub to fill up, she tested some soap on the skin and was thankful that with a bit of scrubbing with a flannel, the colour did appear to come off.

She had gotten through another first from her daughter without imploding or accidentally blowing something up. Just as she placed Rose into the water, Ron poked his head in.

"Everybody is heading out, how about you head down and say goodbye and I'll finish Rose's bath," he offered.

Hermione stood up, smiling at her husband thankfully. "You're incredible, you know that?"

"It might have been mentioned before."

Hermione stood up and watched Ron bend down to their daughter. "You're turning as red as your hair!" he teased.

Rose grinned in response, hitting her hands down onto the water, creating a splash.

With a big smile, Hermione headed down and saw everybody out. By the time they had all gone and she got back upstairs, Rose was in her pyjamas and drifting off.