KNOWING ME KNOWING YOU ⇒ jegulus one shots

THIS IS REGULUS TRYING

Regulus is losing his mind.

As soon as the thought enters his head, he backpedals, He’s not losing his mind. He’s not going crazy. What’s happening right now is that he’s consumed with worry over the fact that his little girl is crying nonstop and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. No matter what he tries, Lyra just keeps wailing.

It’s a combination of everything, really. It’s like the perfect storm of bad timing, James called in for a last minute meeting before his paternity leave and infant pitfalls.

“Lyra, darling, please,” Regulus pleads despite knowing it’s futile to rationalize with a baby. “Please stop crying, love. For mummy?” He repeats, voice desperate and breaking.

He’s got his daughter in his arms, her cheek pressed against his chest as he supports her diapered bottom with one palm and cradles the back of her head with the other.

Regulus has been pacing the house for what seems like an hour, knees bending into a bounce and trying too sooth Lyra. His lips press to the softness of her hair and keeps them there. Lyra's incessant wavering cries are breaking his heart.

“Lyra, sweetie…” Regulus whispers as Lyra cuts him off with a louder wail. She is clinging to her mothdr, first curled around the fabric of his t-shirt. She looks as desperate to stop crying as Regulus does. Tears well in the corners of her eyes and her cries get hung up on the fact that she needs to take a shaky breath.

Shifting his hold on Lyra, Regulus frees up a hand so that he can dial James' number.

He isn't even quite sure how to use a muggle phone but he does know that it goes straight to voicemail, whatever a voicemail even is, which means that Moody had requested James' undivided attention.

Since Lyra's been on this earth, they’ve developed a habit of picking up their phones every time they ring unless they’re in the middle of doing something where a distraction could lead to bodily harm.

Regulus assumes irritating Alastair Moody with a phone call about James' screeching daughter may just count for that.

Regulus understands that but he still gives an exasperated sigh. He’s not sure why; he doesn’t even know what James would be able to do about a crying infant if he had picked up the phone.

And Regulus has no idea why he feels like a fish out of water either. He’s been around sick children before. His cousins may have pretty resilient immune systems now, but they have all gone thought their fair share of illnesses.

He's the youngest out of them all, but he distinctly remembers a pneumonia riddled Narcissa one Christmas, maybe even a few scenes of Bellatrix with some form of chicken pox.

“Fuck this,” Regulus curses under his breath.  He doesn’t know what to do with his crying daughter but he's sure a pediatrician at St. Mungos will.

“Come on, lovey,” Regulus speaks softly against his daughter’s temple.

Regulus has never felt like more of a paranoid idiot.

He feels like a complete newbie; he supposes that’s exactly what he is, inexperienced and a little lost.

Lyra has an ear infection.

It is nothing earth shattering but Regulus is too close to the situation. To him, all he knows are the facts, the facts that consist of Lyra wailing and screeching for hours and Regulus, being the useless mother that he is, is unable to stop them.

So, he feels like an idiot.

Even though healer Montague smiled at Regulus when he showed up cradling a very grumpy Lyra in his arms and said that it’s perfectly normal for first time parents to not know what to do when their baby suffers their first ear infection, Regulus still feels like an idiot.