Chapter Text
James Potter glanced up at the clock face, it read 8:00 pm, and then down at his very-tired-but-not-going-to-sleep son. It had been seven months since Harry had been born, and he had started to sleep through the night in the last month or so, but he wasn’t always the easiest baby to put to bed. Not that James would know what other babies were like. He had been an only child and Lily and he were the first of their close friends to have a baby. If he was really being honest, they were kind of making things up as they went along. Sure, the healers had given them advice when they left the hospital, Molly Weasley had been happy to throw her two-cents in as well, and they had read more than a few books on babies, but none of that had prepared him for the reality of having a baby of his own. It was fantastic. Terrifying, wonderful, exhausting, and fantastic.
Bedtime, however, was still a bit of a mystery to him. He had taken some time off when Harry had first been born, to help Lily and to bond with the baby, but had to return to work sooner than he would have liked; the auror department was swamped and they needed all hands on deck. He had been assigned nights from the beginning, which was nice because he was able to spend time with Harry while he was awake, but it meant that the finer points of sleep-time escaped him. Recently, however, the department had decided to switch him to days and tonight was his first solo sleep mission (Lily had gone out to spend time with her friends and would be back late).
Harry wasn’t fussy, but he definitely didn’t seem to be ready to go to bed. Every time his eyes would start to close, Harry would begin to babble, effectively waking himself up. James had tried everything he could think of. He had tried a warm bath, rocking him, and even laying him in the crib and leaving the room. This last method had led to Harry crying which just about broke James’ heart. He had gone back in after a minute. Now he was walking around the living room, bouncing Harry and making shushing noises.
“This is kind of like dancing,” he mused, and with that, he started to slowly shimmy around the room. After a while, he noticed that his shushing had taken on a familiar rhythm. If he didn’t know better, he would say he had been going along to a slowed down version of ABBA’s 'Take a Chance on Me'.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” he shrugged helplessly at Harry as he started to sing, “If you're all alone when the pretty birds have flown, honey I'm still free, take a chance on me…”
After several rounds of the song, Harry was considerably closer to sleep, but James could feel his arms start to ache. He sat down on the sofa, still quietly singing, still slowly swaying. He looked down at his amazing son and was pleased to see that Harry had finally closed his eyes.
Hours later, Lily found them both there on the sofa, sound asleep. She smiled fondly at them. Then, she tiptoed up the stairs to grab her camera.