Author's Notes : This is my first fanfic in this fandom, so please bear with me. I hope you enjoy the read.

"NO" he shouted.

"Ron..." Hermione called calmly, attempting to reason him.

"NO Hermione !" He's red with fury and shouting louder than before "There is no way, no ! You hear me young lady, I'm forbidding you to-"

"Ronald." Her voice is stronger now, her tone stern and full of warnings.

Rose, who is sitting on the couch in their living room, is terrified. Hermione looks at her, their 15 years-old – no, 16 years old, she turned 16 two weeks ago, gosh how time flies – trying to hold back her tears. She came home for the holidays moments ago, a happy smile on her delicate freckled face, announcing that she was in love. With Scorpius Malfoy. Hermione had seen it coming, it wasn't that hard to guess. Her daughter has been talking endlessly about the boy since she first entered Hogwarts. Ron, it seemed, had chosen to stay in denial since the very beginning. Hermione looked at her husband, his face red with anger and a hint of something else that he is trying to hide, that she is trying to read it. Hurt ? Pain ? She comes closer to him and touches his arm, concealing his temper from their daughter, so that he won't regret any words she knows he wants very much to spill. He doesn't push her away.

"Ron" she tries again, softer this time.

He tears his eyes away from Rose, who still hadn't moved from he spot, afraid of her father that she doesn't recognise. Of course they had told their children about their implication into the war, how their journey has been very important for the destruction of the Dark Lord. They would have learned about it at school anyway and they'd rather have told them the story themselves. But they had kept hidden pieces of History, for who's sake she's not sure anymore, but they never truly told the extend of what happened that fateful day at Malfoy Manor. Very few people knew exactly what happened. Of course, the three of them had had some explaining to do after the war, especially since they had apparated at Bill and Fleur's with Hermione bearing marks of torture and a dead Elf in Harry's arms. They had told the Weasleys a sweetened version. Yes Hermione had been tortured by Bellatrix in the most gruesome way, they had escaped and Lestrange's knife hit Dobby in the chest. They hadn't told anyone that there was an audience to Bellatrix's fury. That Draco stood there, too scared to do something.

Ron looks at her and she sees it. That little something he's trying to hide behind his anger. Fear. Because no matter how long it's been, she knows very much, as much as he does, that the nightmares of that day are still there. There's still nights when she wakes up shaking in agony, her body aching at the memory of the repeating curse, her scars burning her skin forever. When that happens, he holds her and murmurs words of love and apologies in her ears, his nose burried in her hair. She doesn't want him to feel sorry because he saved her that day, he reminded her of her name when the Cruciatus was making her forget, he tore her away from the fallen chandelier and took her to the safe haven of Shell Cottage. She still has the mark of Bellatrix's knife on her neck, the scar on her arm never faded away either. The letters an angry mark against the soft skin of her forearm. Those nights when she jerks awaken by memories of the war, he caresses the word carved in her skin with his lips, reminding her that where she came from never mattered to him, that she was more than just a blood status.

She looks at him and she sees fear in the dark blue of his eyes.

There is nights when he is the one who screams. Her name. Like he did that day, terrified that he wasn't going to be able to save her. In his nightmares, she dies before he can reach her. Those nights, she is the one to comfort him, to remind him that she didn't die, that he did save her, right from the beginning.

And now, in broad daylight, in the middle of their living room, 25 years later, she sees fear in his eyes, because of what happened that day, because of where it happened and who witnessed it, unmoving.

He swallows unevenly, trying to tame his raging emotions.

"Ron..." Hermione says again, taking his hand into hers. "Scorpius is not Draco."

"He's still a Malfoy Hermio-"

She cuts him "And I'm a mudblood !"

He snarls "Don't call yourself tha-"

"What ? It's true ! But it never mattered to you, right ?"

He's balancing himself restlessly on his foot, a sign she reads well after so many years of sharing a life with him. He's starting to see her point but he is still refusing to acknowledge it. He's avoiding her gaze, fixing the wall behind the couch, where a picture of their children stands, it was taken at the beach, when Rose was 5, it was Victoire's birthday that day. Fear.

"Ron. Look at me." She pleads gently. He's still refusing to look at her, but his gaze has shifted and he is now looking at their daughter, still glued to her spot on the couch.

"He's a Malfoy Rose, anyone but a Malfoy."

In his words she hears the tears that he doesn't let fall on his cheeks. He doesn't want their child to see him cry. She holds her palm to his jaw, forcing him to turn his piercing blue eyes to her. She feels a lump the size of her fist forming in her throat and she knows that she's close to tears as well.

"Love," she whispers, she doesn't trust her voice, "this, is what we fought for." She brings her forehead to his, needing him to understand how much she loves him, needing him to comprehend that even though they fought against archaic beliefs so many years ago, their world still needed to be reminded, he needed to be reminded. "So where you come from doesn't matter." She feels him bend to her words, a single tear falls from her eye and he brushes it right away, crushing her against his chest into a tight embrace. He's shaking in her arms, holding her slightly too tight, but she doesn't let go. He's crying now. Openly.

He releases her. "I'm sorry", his voice is hoarse like it had been after he had screamed her name in despair. "but Malfoy, Hermione ! He was there, they still live there for Merlin's sake !"

"I know, but Rose loves Scorpius."

Rose. She forgot she was still in the room. She turns away from her husband to look at their daughter sitting still, holding her breath. She looks as if she was just given the last piece of a puzzle she has been trying to figure out for years, which, Hermione realises, is exactly what happened. She's crying too.

"Mom..."

Hermione crosses the room to sit next to her. "Your scar, that word, on your arm,...wa-was S-scorpius dad ther-...D-dad..." Rose is stuttering, she looks at Ron, despair in her eyes.

Rose's mind is putting the pieces together, her breathing is uneven and Hermione pleads her to take deep breaths. She runs her hand into the bushy ginger hair of their daughter, the perfect combination of the two of them, and waits for her to finish her train of thoughts. Rose is opening her mouth to speak again when Hermione feels Ron taking seat beside their firstborn, taking her in his arms.

"Rosie..."

When he speaks, Hermione thinks she imagined it at first. His voice is low, he stops to catch his breath and her hand. She gives him a light squeeze to encourage him to keep going.

"You know we love you right ?" Rose gives a small nod against his chest. "Things happened a long time ago, bad things, that involved me, your mom and uncle Harry. But it wasn't just the three of us. And Scorpius's..." his voice cracks, Hermione holds her breath. His eyes searches hers and when he finds them, he breathes deeply, and so does she, and he keeps going "Scorpius's dad was part of it. The thing is, your mom is right, like always" he smiles, and the three of them let a small laugh escape their lips. "We fought...so you kids could grow up in a world where you don't have to second guess someone's origins...and I'm sorry. Because I still fear the past and sometimes...sometimes I need to be remembered." His thumbs caress her scar through her camisole and Hermione's heart his hammering in her chest, Merlin she loves that man.