Becoming a Woman is a Wonderful Thing by lilyevans_Jan30



Summary: Harry and Lily share a tender moment. He'd rather face Voldemort again.
Rating: PG starstarstarstarstar
Categories: Post-DH/PM
Characters: None
Genres: None
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Published: 2009.07.13
Updated: 2009.07.13


Becoming a Woman is a Wonderful Thing by lilyevans_Jan30
Chapter 1: Becoming a Woman is a Wonderful Thing
Author's Notes:

“Dad, Lily’s locked herself in the tent and she won’t let us in.”

James was standing in front of his father, arms crossed, an annoyed look on his face. Right behind him stood Albus, mimicking, unconsciously or not, his older brother’s stance.

“And she told us to go away forever,” he added helpfully.

“What did you two do to her?” Harry asked. Usually, if two of his children were going to be at odds with the third, Lily would be paired with one of her brothers against the other. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between Al and James that ganging up against their little sister was forbidden, unless of course, she had back-up. If Rose and Hugo were around, for example, all bets were off.

But right now it was just Harry and his three children camping together in the middle of nowhere for the weekend. Ginny was visiting the training camp of England’s Quidditch team for a special story she was writing as a run up to the World Cup. There was such secrecy about England’s preparations that Ginny herself didn’t know where she was; a Portkey had been arranged from the team’s office at the Ministry and she would not be home until Monday.

Harry sighed and looked at his sons, trying to determine from their expressions how guilty they were. Things had been going really well on this trip. Although he had admitted it only to Ginny, he’d been rather pleased that none of the kids had protested his idea to spend the weekend camping with him. Or at least they’d confined their eye-rolling to themselves. How many other fathers of teenagers could say that?

Well, Lily was not quite a teenager yet, thank goodness. Although Harry’s memories of Ginny at thirteen and fourteen and fifteen shifted from vague to pleasant to rather arousing, her brothers often painted quite a different picture of their little sister during those years. Ginny herself had been known to recall puberty in less than enthusiastic terms, at least, Harry assumed that’s what she meant by “those bloody hormones, making me think dating that wanker Michael Corner was a good idea”.

Lily was like her mother in a lot of ways — most of them wonderful. But when he thought of Lily getting older — getting interested in boys, or worse, having them interested in her, it was no wonder that Harry sometimes wished he could keep her little forever.

But his musings were doing nothing to help the current situation. He looked silently at his sons, waiting. Often, that was all it took. Somehow (definitely not through any carefully staged conversations with his wife), Harry had gotten the reputation in his immediate family for being quite adept at Legilimency. (He wasn’t, really — it and Occlumency were his weakest points as an Auror, but his children didn’t have to know that). Sometimes he could even get them to spill their guts without even trying, particularly if they were worried he’d “see” something he shouldn’t.

But this time the boys were calmly, stubbornly silent.

“Really dad, I swear, we didn’t do anything. Al and I were getting ready to play Exploding Snap and she suddenly came out of her bedroom, plopped down at the table and ordered us out.” James was looking beseechingly at Harry, not a hint of guile on his face.

“Why don’t the two of you go for a fly or something,” said Harry. “I’ll try to figure out what’s wrong with Lily.”

Harry got up and walked over to the tent, hoping that whatever his daughter was upset about was not serious enough to ruin his plans for a Muggle-style cookout that night. If his kids were going to let him take them camping, he was going to go all out — a bonfire, marshmallows, ghost stories and all. Although, Harry considered, given the fact that all three of them went to school with actual ghosts, the latter activity probably had less appeal than it would for a group of Muggle children.

“Lily?” Harry got as close to the tent as he could before a rather impressive Imperturbable Charm pushed him back.

Harry took out his wand. Normally, he and Ginny tried not to interfere too much when their children wanted to be alone — it was a lesson that had taken Harry several years and many painful conversations to learn. Having never had anyone to care about him growing up, he couldn’t quite understand why his children didn’t automatically run to him for help solving every single problem.

Ginny had humphed and asked him if he knew anyone else in the family who liked to keep their feelings bottled up inside, and after that Harry had stopped pacing the hallway and trying to whisper under the crack in the door whenever one of the kids locked themselves in their room.

This was different though. He had no idea why Lily was upset. She had locked the rest of them out of their only source of shelter. More importantly, Ginny wasn’t around to tell him to leave their daughter alone.

Harry had no trouble breaking through the charm — he was a senior Auror up against a 12-year-old girl after all — but as he pushed back the front flap of the tent he mentally noted that Lily must be extremely upset. She would have needed quite a bit of magic behind her to conjure a charm as strong as she had. He wondered what was up.

He expected to find her sprawled out on one of the beds bawling her eyes out, or at least hexing everything in sight, and so was quite unprepared for the sight of his daughter sitting at the table writing frantically on a sheet of parchment.

“Uhh, hey Lils,” he said cautiously.

She looked up and sighed, immediately covering the parchment so he couldn’t see it.

“ It really sucks to have an Auror for a dad sometimes,” she said. “There’s no way Uncle Ron could have gotten through that charm.”

“Heh, don’t be so sure,” responded Harry. He sat down at the table. “And anyway, if he couldn’t, Aunt Hermione certainly would be able to.” He liked the normalness of their conversation so far. She wasn’t screaming or trying to blame her brothers for something. “So what’s up?”

Instead of answering, Lily looked around the tent and frowned. “Where’s Mercury?”

“Out hunting, I guess,” said Harry. “Who do you need to send a letter to?”

“None of your business,” said Lily, sounding a little more like the sullen teenager he’d expected to find in the tent.

“Did your brothers do anything to you?”

“Where’s Aunt Hermione?” Lily asked, again ignoring Harry’s question.

“Umm, I think she and Uncle Ron and the kids went somewhere Muggle with her parents,” said Harry. He bit back a grin remembering how jealous Arthur had been to hear that Ron was going to someplace called “Euro Disney” in France.

“No owls there,” Lily muttered to herself. “What about Fleur? Or Victoire?”

“Victoire is still on her honeymoon with Teddy, remember? I think Fleur and Bill and Louis went to Egypt.”

“Angelina?”

“I don’t really know, Lily. Somewhere with Uncle George, I guess. What’s going on?”

Harry was confused. It was Summer; most of Ginny’s large family was off traveling one place or another. They’d all secured tickets for the Quidditch World Cup and were planning on having a reunion there at the end of August. So what was wrong with Lily?

“I guess it will have to be Gran, then,” she sighed.

“You guess what will have to be Gran? Lily sweetheart, is something wrong?”

Harry reached out and put his hand on Lily’s arm. She flinched for a second, then looked down at the table and shook her head. “No, it’s fine.” She didn’t say anything else, and a second later a tear splashed onto the table.

“It doesn’t look fine to me,” said Harry. He hesitated for a second, considering. Ginny was undoubtedly busy, not to mention extremely difficult to find, right now. Not that he couldn’t if it was an emergency. The problem was, Harry couldn’t say for sure if what was going on with Lily was an emergency or not.

“Could your mum . . .” he began hesitantly. Lily’s head snapped up.

“Mum?? You can get mum?” The relief on her face was palpable.

“Umm, I’m not sure,” said Harry. Lily’s face fell. “I mean, I can,” Harry rushed to reassure her, “but I won’t, unless I know she’s really needed.” He lifted Lily’s chin. “Is she?”

Lily nodded silently.

“You need to do better than that Lily. If I have to interrupt your mum while she’s on one of her most important assignments, I’m going to need to give her an idea why.”

Lily squirmed in her seat. “Can’t I tell her?”

“Is this about a boy?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

Lily looked down at the table again. “Igotmyperiod.”

“What?” Harry was pretty sure he’d heard right the first time. He was hoping he was wrong, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t.

Lily sighed. “I. Got. My. Period.” She wrung her hands in her lap. “For the first time.”

Harry ran his hand through his hair. “Bloody Hell.”

“Yes, pretty much,” said Lily. Harry looked at his daughter. Her lips were twitching and a second later she bit back the tiniest smirk. Harry couldn’t help it — he snorted and then laid his head on the table and groaned.

Lily giggled nervously and Harry wanted to congratulate himself — he hadn’t gone running screaming out of the tent yet. This was so definitely Ginny’s territory. He’d covered “boy things” with his sons and he’d agreed with Ginny that when the time was right, he’d talk to them about more (Merlin, he hoped it wasn’t almost time to talk to them about more).

And so. He was stuck in a tent in the middle of nowhere, wife almost completely unavailable, and with a daughter who had just . . . who was . . .

“Becoming a woman is a beautiful thing,” he blurted.

“What?”

Harry looked up. Lily was staring at him, her face bright red. “Please don’t say that again,” she mumbled.

“Sorry,” said Harry. “I’m . . . well this is new territory for me.”

“Me too,” Lily agreed. “So, can you get mum?” she asked hopefully.

Of course Harry could. It would be a huge relief to both him and Lily to have Ginny there, taking care of things. But even as he was mentally thinking of the steps needed to find Ginny without getting her in trouble with her boss or the English National Team (not to mention keeping the press from learning this bit of Potter “human interest”), he also heard himself tell his daughter, “Let’s not bother mum, honey, I can handle it.”

Had he actually just said that?

“You can?” asked Lily, doubt written all over her face.

“Hey, I killed Voldemort, remember?” Harry joked.

“Yeah, but I’ll bet you didn’t tell him that ‘becoming a woman is a wonderful thing’ before you yelled Expelliarmus,” quipped Lily. She seemed much calmer now. Harry plunged on.

“So, uhh, what do you need?” he asked. “I mean, I know what you need — I’ve bought . . . those things for your mum before, quite often actually. I think she uses a brand called ‘Magical Secrets’ - how does that sound?” He looked at her hopefully. He could do this. He’d Apparate to the nearest Apothecary, buy the . . . things, Apparate back, and then leave her alone so she could . . .

Harry shuddered. He couldn’t do this.

Lily made a face. “I think those are for . . . older witches,” she said.

“Oh,” said Harry lamely. “Well, then, what kind do you need?”

“I’m not sure,” said Lily softly. “Couldn’t you . . . ask at the store? What kind teenagers use?”

Harry opened his mouth to answer — although he had no idea what he was going to say — when Albus and James came bursting into the tent, soaking wet and carrying their brooms.

“Hey Dad, good thing you broke Lily’s wards — it’s pouring out there.” The boys threw themselves into chairs, spraying water everywhere. James actually shook his head all over the table before punching Lily on the arm.

“Hey sis, are you over whining about whatever crawled up your arse?”

In response, Lily burst into tears.

“You are such a prat, James!” she yelled before jumping up, grabbing the parchment she had been writing on, and running into the tent’s smallest bedroom.

“What did I say?” James asked. “It’s not like I’ve never asked her that question before. ”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed. “But you’ve never asked it right after she got her period for the first time.”

“Daddy!” Lily was standing at the door, a look of horror on her face. “Why did you tell them?”

“Yeah Dad,” said Albus, looking a little sick. “Why did you tell us? Cause, that’s something we really didn’t need to know.”

“Ever,” agreed James. He stood up. “Come on, Al. Between an overly hormonal sister and a raging thunderstorm, I’ll take the rain.” They left.

Harry looked at Lily, the silence stretched between them.

He could do this. He could Apparate to the store, ask the right questions, come back and give Lily all the support she needed. She was his little girl . . . he could definitely do this.

“Lily?”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“Hold on, sweetie. I’m going to contact your mum.”

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