If she was less dignified, Hilda would’ve huffed as she struggled to push the pram forward. On top of being crowded and dirty, the fair grounds were bumpy, and while they might have been ideal for grown children, they weren’t ideal for children who still need to be pushed around by their parents.
Hilda’s annoyance was doubled by the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be doing this alone. Caleb was supposed to be there with her, taking over the pram pushing duties from time to time, but he had disappeared soon after they arrived. From the way he focused so intently on her and seemingly ignored their surroundings from the moment they stepped foot on the fair grounds, she had the feeling he’d left to escape the fair itself rather than her, but the realization didn’t lessen her feelings abandonment any.
Hilda would’ve loved to have had been attending the fair with Narcissa or Liliana. At least then she would’ve gotten to gossip and bond over the troubles of pram pushing on uneven ground. However, Caleb felt that the fair would be a good public outing for them, especially since they hadn’t had one in a while. The papers could get a picture of them strolling around together, doting over Seamus, among the rest of the people. It would be a good look. Only for that to happen, Caleb would have to come back to her.
Hilda had only spent a couple of minutes pushing the pram by herself before she gave up with the muggle method and charmed the damn thing to levitate. If she was going to do it alone, she was going to do it her way. She didn’t care if it seemed prissy. When it came down to it, she was prissy, and it was easier to lean into it than it was to push a pram over uneven ground.
However, in the end the levitation seemed to matter little. Even though the pram was moving along evenly and effortlessly now, the upset Seamus felt from the bumps wasn’t going to be soothed by the fix in consistency.
It was in that moment that a stranger ambushed Hilda with help. Though he wasn’t much younger than herself, his messy hair and the silly faces he made at Seamus caused Hilda to think of him as a young man. An instinctual part of her wanted to shoo him away - he was a stranger who had gotten closer to her son than she was normally comfortable with. However, the silly faces were working in calming Seamus down, and with Caleb having already abandoned her, leaving her alone in the bustling, dirty landscape that was the fair, she decided she wasn’t going to to turn away the help.
“Thank you, for calming him down,” Hilda smiled. “He seems to really like the faces.”
Nate wouldn’t say he a kid whisperer but they seemed to like him enough. Maybe it was his facial expressions or his hair, but they tended to focus on him when he was out and point at him. Sometimes they even giggled and seemed to enjoy him twitching his nose at them like a bunny.
He wasn’t really doing anything at the moment, Nic having gone out of sight while he waited for him to get back, so when he saw a small kiddo crying he couldn’t help but focus on him. He didn’t get super close but started making funny faces at the kiddo until he heard him starting to giggle and stop crying.
He hadn’t even really realized the mother had figured it out, and was almost weary after the run-in with Lia. After all, he wasn’t trying to do anything weird he just figured the kid was fussing and thought it would be a bit of a lark.
Still he didn’t look tense and when she said thank you Nate nodded and laugh. “Sorry it’s something my brother used to do to me when we were little so I figured it might work. I’m glad he was amused.”
