Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his Magical universe belong to J.K Rowling. enjoy and plz R&R.
Breathtakingly beautiful. This was all I could come up with to describe the scene before my eyes, as I stood rooted to the spot.
Stars lay scattered across the night sky, dancing playfully, it was almost like a contest of who could glimmer the brightest and hold my gaze for the longest period yet. The crescent moon looked like a ravenous giant had grabbed a bite from it to satiate its hunger. Yet, the moonlight was enough to create a silver gleam over the entire city and illuminate it in a kingdom-of-the-gods-like glow. Taking off my sandals, I sat down on the grass. I've always come here whenever I wanted to take my mind off things or needed to relax after a tiresome day. But the beauty of this place never fails to amaze me.
"You look like you showered with flour, melted chocolate and cream. You even smell like it, Granger." Draco sat down beside me and handed me my cup of hot chocolate, while taking a sip of his own coffee.
"Yeah, like you're any different, ferret!" I retorted, sticking out my tongue.
"Touché" He rolled his eyes at my immature behaviour.
We sat in comfortable silence for a while, sipping our beverages and pondering over today's events. Soon, we were laughing ourselves silly, rolling around on the grass.
Today's day was the crème de la crème of all days. It had started out pretty much like any other Saturday. You know, me catching up on some much needed sleep, ending up sleeping through my alarm thrice and Draco having to kick me right out of bed to wake me . I was still drowsy when realization dawned on me- today is the 13th of January. I was up and into the bathroom before you could say 'faster than lightning.'
Tomorrow is Scorpius, our son's, fifth birthday and Draco and I had planned on baking him a cake ourselves. We'd managed to convince him to go along with Harry, Ginny and Lily to the cinemas to watch 'Cinderella', which was a herculean feat in itself.
Now, just in case you're wondering, leaving a wizard who has never even seen an oven before (and also knows nothing about baking or cooking) and a witch who severely lacks baking skills, in charge of baking a cake for their son, it means disaster. Pure, unadulterated disaster.
So we started off by dashing to the shop and grabbing flour, vanilla essence and heavy cream. After preheating the oven to 350 degrees F, I started on the dry mixture for the cake. In a huge bowl, I stirred together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Draco had already started working on the frosting with the help of the recipe I'd given him.
I added in the melted butter, water and vanilla essence and began blending it all together. Once the batter was ready, I poured it into the baking pan and went to place in the oven.
And then it happened. The Fates looked upon our activities and smiled a sinister smile. On this perfectly going moment, they envisioned a disaster …and the planets realigned to alter the scene.
I accidentally slipped on the flour that had, goodness knows how, landed on the floor right in my path. Draco yelled so loudly, his voice threatened to make my ears bleed. I sat on the floor, stunned, unable to think straight. The cake batter was everywhere, in my hair, on the floor, on Draco's dress robes, it was even on the ceiling.
Draco came to help me up but he wasn't spared either. He landed right beside me, having slipped on the cake batter. The kitchen floor was a pool of mush and mayhem. We sat in the mess and laughed until we cried.
After we'd gathered our senses, we got up and began to tidy up. We scrubbed to kitchen floor on our hands and knees. And then we tackled the ceiling. It took a lot of effort to scrub the batter completely off the ceiling but after an hour and a half the kitchen looked spotless. It was after we'd cleaned up the mess the muggle way that we realised we could just as easily have used our wands. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
We still had a little of everything left and we started all over again. Luckily, Draco had completed the frosting mix and had placed it in the refrigerator (I absolutely refused to live in Malfoy Manor unless there was a fridge in it, leaving Draco, my darling husband, little choice but to cater to my whims) before the catastrophe.
The batter for the cake was ready pretty quickly and we'd managed to place it in the oven without another fiasco and soon the mouth-watering smell of chocolate cake wafted through the house.
Indeed the cake was way smaller than we'd initially intended, nevertheless we were proud of it. Draco covered the cake with frosting and wrote 'Happy Birthday Scorp' on it with white icing. I decorated the corners and bottom of the cake with icing and we quickly placed it in the fridge. And not a moment too soon because the next minute we heard the swoosh of the fireplace signalling Harry and Scorpius' arrival via floo.
It was late, Scorp was dead tired and so he did not protest when I insisted he go to bed, although he did demand Draco to read him a story (he is my son after all and I wasn't known as the know-it-all bookworm for nothing, you know.). After making sure he was asleep and snuggled comfortably in his bed, we had apparated here, for some alone-time.
As I snuggled into Draco's embrace, I couldn't help but wonder how my life had become what it is now.
After the war had ended, all of us who had survived had struggled to pull our lives together. Hogwarts had been returned to its former glory and we i.e., me, Harry and Ron had returned to complete our last year after which we'd gone into auror training. It was here that we'd re-met Draco and slowly but surely, friendship had bloomed between the four of us and love between me and Draco. Five years later, we had Scorp.
Life teaches us so many things, foremost being, as Dumbledore had once said – Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. I had always admired him, but I didn't know just how much these words of his rang true.
At least, not until now.