For Papa --- I'm proud to be a daddy's girl.

It's A Father Thing

Chapter One: What Fathers Will Understand

Fathers will understand where I am coming from. There is just something about their little girls that captivate them and hold them captive for the rest of their lives. The process goes something like this.

Lily was being cradled in her mother's arms when she opened her eyes. And once she did, I was hers. No fuss, no complains, no nothing. Just a flash of your daughter's eyes and you, old man, are a goner. I know I was.

When she turned three and started running around the house --- stumbling, actually --- and ruining the expensive gadgets, vases and various family heirlooms I thought I was so clever to place here and there, I attempt to get mad at her. But she pouted with her bottom lip protruding and looked at me with pitiful green eyes, and I can't. Could you?

Then she's seven and she asks for a bedtime story. I try to explain that her mother is really the best one to ask for all this story telling business. I tried to tell her a fairy tale, but my version went something like this: "Once upon time, there was a princess. She grew up and married a prince. They lived happily ever after." She would shake her head at me and tell me to tell her a real story. I can't say no, so I tell her about guns. She seems to enjoy this and I know I enjoy that she enjoys it. Wouldn't you?

She's ten and she's going to school. She is. And she's growing to become a lady. I can see it and anyone who isn't blind can see that her red hair sparkles in the sun and her green eyes are bright and inquisitive. Then one day she comes home and looks at me with confused eyes, saying that she was asked out today. I panic. I have no idea what to do. But she looks at me fondly and says, "Daddy, I said no." But I wonder when the day will come that she will say yes. Haven't you?

Then she was off to a boarding school for witches and wizards and I was thrilled for her, because she was happy. She was ecstatic and she wrote me with letters that always began, Daddy and Mommy, guess what… She wrote often and told us tales, about this and that and everything. I longed for those letters, because they were filled with stories. Her mother and I grinned as we heard about her stories, imagining her animated expression as she told it to us. We thought about her every day. What parent wouldn't?

But she sent me a letter which sent me into a frenzy of panic. Panic which nearly choked me alive. Lily had a boyfriend. My little girl, my precious little girl had a boyfriend. A part of me was snarling, thinking wait until I get my hands on that boy, while another part was crying that she was growing up so fast. But neither part was the part that wrote the letter that told her I was happy for her. His name was Henry. I hated Henry. You think about a boy kissing your baby girl. You would get mad, too. I did.

She wrote often, about Henry, then Henry turned to Tommy when she was fourteen, and I'm pretty sure that there was an Isaac and David shoved somewhere in those letters. I made my disdain for her boyfriends known, although I never imposed. While I disliked them, I didn't honestly think they would last. I was waiting for The One. It was father's intuition that told me, even if I had never met any of them before, that they weren't The One. The One who would take my little girl away. Years passed and she was seventeen. That was when I met The One.

She brought him home for Christmas.

James Potter. He was in those letters too. He was the one who made my daughter see red. I found him amusing, to be honest, when Lily wrote about him, even when she described him with the most scathing words imaginable. She cursed and cussed and said that he was an abomination to mankind. I wrote back telling her to calm down, that that Potter boy was just too smitten. She wrote me a long letter on how she was just a conquest to him. I grinned, amused to the extreme. Who wouldn't be?

Now that I think about it, when Henry changed to Tommy and Isaac and David and who knows else was inserted in Lily's letters, James was always there. She referred to him as that Potter, of course. But that Potter was a constant in Lily's life, in Lily's letters and when I look back I shake my head and wonder how I never saw that he was The One.

Dear Daddy and Mommy,

Guess what? Okay, it sounds dumb. I sound like a five year old coming to tell you about a worm I saw, instead of a fifteen year old writing home. But it's just tradition, as you well know, to say that.

School's fine, classes are getting more difficult as we are preparing for our O.W.L.S. The classes are more comprehensive and the teachers are bearing down on all of us. Professor McGonnagal actually wants us to be able to transfigure a pot into a living breathing animal. I'm not exactly having much luck with that --- my animal ended up being a pot that had ears, eyes and a tail. Not at all the baby dragon I was hoping for. Just kidding. Well, about the dragon part, everything else is just fact.

I have a boyfriend. Isaac Hamilton --- he's a Ravenclaw, really smart. Dad, I think you'd like him. Mum… I think you would respect him. How's that? He's really nice, treats me like a princess. Emma says I'm so lucky, Isaac just spoils me. I have to agree.

James Potter is annoying me again. And don't tell me that you don't remember him. He's that git. He struts the hallways like he owns them, he never actually tries to succeed in anything, but to my dismay he does, and he actually has his own fan club of girls dying to date him. What I can't help but think about is that if he has so many girls on his end then why does he have to keep bugging me? Waste of perfectly good air, I tell you. He just makes my blood boil by just standing there.

Anyway, much love to both of you, say hi to Petunia for me and I hope that all is well.

Write soon,

Your Lily

Dear Lily,

Guess what? It doesn't sound dumb, dear, it sounds cute.

Why would you want to transfigure a pot into a dragon? Why can't you just use a pot for cooking the way it's meant to me be and buy a dragon? Or whatever animal you need at the time.

I'm glad --- I am not glad --- forget what your father said about that, that you have a boyfriend again, Tommy wasn't nearly good enough for you. I have a vague idea by what you mean by me respecting Isaac, but you remind him not to get fresh with you --- or else I'll kill him if he does, you hear --- ignore him.

Ignore that Potter, he sounds like trouble, but you --- you ought to give him a chance, he sounds amusi --- ignore him. Just try to be patient and kind, Lily, you know how some people are. We love you and Petunia says hi.

Mum and Dad

P.S. Don't ignore that Potter, he sounds like --- stop bugging her, Jake. We love you, dear.