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They had tried not to worry about it; different children mature at different rates. That was a given. A mantra all new parents repeated and had repeated to them as their children met (or didn’t) arbitrarily set milestones. But it was still hard not to worry.
“We don’t even need to worry,” Ginny had said emphatically one evening. “It’s not like being non-magical would mean we love him less and he still has lots of options. He’ll still lead a very happy life.”
Harry had whole-heartedly agreed and nodded enthusiastically to her points. Magical ability wasn’t what made his baby special.
And still, they worried.
It became even harder to stop the worrying when Albus came along. Albus was a much grumpier baby than James had been: difficult to get to sleep, to eat, to settle. But he was only 6 months old when the first object flew from Ginny’s hand into his pudgy baby fist. And Albus never stopped, it drove them mad but earned chuckles of grand-parental delight at the Weasley dinner table.
“Rosie did something similar recently.” Hermione told them. “All of her favourite plushie books crinkle without her even touching them!”
Molly beamed as she plucked Albus up and onto her hip, holding his desired object just a short distance away and smiling indulgently as the chortling infant magicked the object across the space.
Later that evening Harry found James sitting in bed, his favourite Niffler toy sitting across the room. He was staring at it, concentration set in a firm line across his toddler face as he reached out his hand in an imitation of Albus’ motions earlier. It didn’t move.
James’ face crumpled and he let out a small sob. Harry moved instinctually, swooping in to give James a big cuddle and, hopefully, provide some comfort.
“Why can’t I?” The blatant confusion caused more pain than Harry could have anticipated. He had no answer, no soothing platitude, because wasn’t that what he and Ginny whispered about – why couldn’t James do this magic that came so naturally to the other children they knew, to his own younger brother?
“I don’t know Jamie.” He and Ginny had decided from the start that they always wanted to be as honest as possible with their children, even when it meant admitting they didn’t know something. “I don’t know why you can’t do it, but even if you never can you’re still fantastic. The bestest James I know.”
James shuffled in his arms, reaching up one hand to rest gently in the base of Harry’s beard. Something he’d done ever since he was tiny.
“The bestest James?” he queried.
“The absolute bestest James.” Harry confirmed.
Once James was firmly off to sleep – and not even a rampaging heard of erumpants could wake James up once he was down – Harry retreated to the warm sitting room when Ginny sat in her favourite plush armchair, reading her Quidditch Monthly magazine and sipping a freshly steaming cup of tea.
“Did he go down ok? You were gone a while.”
“He’s starting to realise that the others can do things he can’t, he was trying to get Flumpkin to zoom into his hands.”
Harry hadn’t expected tears to well in his eyes as he spoke, but he wasn’t surprised by them. Nor was he surprised by Ginny’s distraught expression.
“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do? Neville didn’t show magic until he was older than James is now.” Ginny regularly pointed out that James was still younger than when Neville was when he did his first bit of accidental magic, Harry was beginning to worry what would happen if James still wasn’t showing signs even after that point.
“Neville also grew up in a really dysfunctional family that put a lot of pressure on him to show it, we’ve never tried to make him show us magic… have we? And I’m not willing to put him into an unsafe situation to find out, I know George was kidding about it but it still rubs me the wrong way.”
Ginny held out her hand for him, which he took gratefully as he slouched into the same, frankly ridiculously large, seat. Eventually moving so his arm looped behind her shoulders, her arm crossed over her body to keep a hold of his hand.
“We will not recklessly endanger our child through intent or neglect.” She said, solemnly. “Even when they refuse to eat anything for lunch and then scream about how they’re hungry. Or when we’re worried that they might not have magical abilities and know that life or death scenarios often bring it out.”
“Great, thanks Gin.”
“You didn’t buy me the ‘Mum of the Year’ mug for nothing.”
“Actually I think you’ll find James and Albus bought you that.”
“And where did they get the money to buy it?”
“They did small tasks around the house in exchange for pocket money, of course.”
“Small tasks?”
“Jamie did some drawings – the ones on the kitchen cupboard doors currently – and Albus sat and looked cute.”
Ginny smiled. “I was wrong to assume, clearly very hard work on both their parts.”
“Exactly.” Harry nodded. “I was thinking of getting James some of those weird watercolour packs we see at the Christmas markets as his present this year. It’s only a few weeks away now and we both know he doesn’t need anymore brooms.”
“You can never have too many brooms.”
“I’ll remind you that you said that when you next need something out of the upstairs toy box and they all fly out in a weird formation again.”
“It’s something a poltergeist would do!”
***
A few weekends later, they went on the Potter family outing to the local Christmas markets. It was crowded, but that was how they liked it. In the Muggle world, crowds were fun and exciting – things to get lost in instead of recognised in and then swarmed by.
The smells of the market drifted and overlapped into a cacophony of different flavours. Ginny always went for the freshly roasting chocolate coated almonds, whilst Harry inevitably caved to the call of the crepe stall.
Last year they had only needed to manage a then two year old James and a ‘not pregnant enough to need you to do everything, thank you very much!’ Ginny. It hadn’t been terrible, James had worn himself out quite quickly and them promptly fallen fast asleep in the pram. This year, Harry had a grisly-but-mostly-asleep Albus strapped to his chest in the baby harness whilst Ginny wrangled James – a task which was getting increasingly difficult as James’ energy reserves grew with him.
“Pretty lights!” James yelled as he attempted to run towards a stall selling lovely, but definitely very fragile, candle holders and glass tree decorations. Harry was fairly certain it was only Ginny’s quick reflexes and muscle memory from Quidditch which prevented James from running full force into a lot of breakable objects.
“Ooh, Jamie, look!” She squatted down beside him, wrapping one arm tightly around his torso – a wise move – whilst using the other to point towards a big sign that read ‘Free Christmas Cookies for Winner of the Best Face Paint Competition!’. “Shall we get your face painted? You might win a cookie!”
James beamed at them. “I want to be a Augurey!”
Harry and Ginny exchanged brief, wide-eyed, glances.
“How about a dragon instead, in this cold weather you’re already blowing out steam like they do when they’re James-aged.”
James considered this suggestion quite seriously before agreeing to being a dragon, a much more muggle-safe request.
“I want to look like a dragon!” He declared to the artist, who seemed amused by his confidence.
“Great! What colour dragon would you like to be?”
“Red. Like the ones with tails and horns my uncle Charlie works with.”
“His uncle works with rare reptiles in Romania.” Harry said swiftly, with a smile.
The face-painter nodded and smiled again. “Great, and it will match with your hair.”
After a fairly agonising few minutes as it was hard to get James to sit still – which the face-paint artist took with good humour – James looked like a small, bright red, slightly scaley human. Nothing like a dragon, but then the painter had never seen a real one, so it was to be expected. James was thrilled, talking all about how Dominique has always wanted to actually see the dragons and how they breath fire.
They walked around the market for a bit longer. James was captivated by the small wooden frogs which, when a wooden stick was passed over it’s carved back, imitated the sound of the animal’s call. He told them with the very sage wisdom of a small child that “Louis likes frogs.”
In fact, the more the walked round the more James pointed out items that other members of their family would enjoy.
“Victoire likes soft things.”
“Grandpa likes rubbish like that.” He was scolded for that one.
“Uncle Percy needs new paper weights. He talked about it forever when I was eating my pudding.”
“Uncle George wanted a stick, he said he wanted to replace the one up Uncle Percy’s – ” Ginny had quickly redirected his attention at that one, although some of the people in the crowd around them had clearly heard, to differing levels of amusement or disdain.
Ginny bought the paint set for James whilst Harry distracted him with the singing animatronic moose head that all Christmas markets seemed to have. Ginny found them creepy and never walked past them.
***
Christmas day at the Burrow was always an affair. All the families together was already chaotic, but add in presents, even more excitable children, and the fact Molly stood by the tradition of having at least one glass of brandy in between cooking each course of the Christmas meal – it was a lot.
Which is why it took them so long to realise that people seemed to be getting extra gifts.
Arthur was exclaiming how much he loved his mini-motorbike statue made out of… muggle rubbish? And where was that frog noise coming from? Percy was extolling the virtues of a properly made paper weight.
Slowly but surely, Harry and Ginny discovered that not only had every item James had pointed out ended up in the present piles for each person, but that they even appeared to be the exact one James had pointed to. The scarf he’d liked for Fleur had a very particular pattern, the only one at the stall. The muggle magic trick box he thought Teddy would like had had a dent in the side, that’s why they’d decided not to get it in the first place…
“Jamie, where did all these presents come from?” James seemingly didn’t understand that he’d done magic, instead he seemed concerned.
“I didn’t take them! I was just thinking about how people would like them. And now, they’re here!” He said the last bit with a small raise of his arms, the same way he sometimes said ‘Jamie is the winner!’ or ‘My food is all done!’.
“We know you didn’t take them Jamie, it was very kind of you to think of other people. But next time if you think a present is really, really good and you can’t stop thinking about it, let Mummy or Daddy know and we’ll go and let you buy it, ok?”
James nodded very seriously. “Do you think if I buy it, it will zoom to my hand?”
“Hmm,” Ginny paused with a finger on her chin, tilting her head so the Christmas hat from her cracker slid slightly to the side. “I don’t think you’ll learn how to do that for a while, sorry Jamie, but I do think you’ll learn it and you’ll be fantastic at it when you do.”
James seemed satisfied with that answer, and Harry and Ginny decided that they’d keep James’ first accidental magic a small and personal secret.
Especially when at new year, and in front of the whole family, he managed to actually breath fire whilst pretending to be a dragon.