Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Harry Potter Universe – I tried closing my eyes and jumping three times on one leg once but I fear the nice lady at the carnival ripped me off.

A/N: This story takes place about four years after the war. Voldemort is dead but he left a nasty little surprise behind…

Prologue: Once upon a time …

It was a mellow night, and the sounds from the fire basin were lulling Blaise to sleep. Fighting against the heavy pull, he shuffled from side to side. He had to stay awake and watch for the hunters. He wasn't on demon watch today, thank Merlin, but falling asleep would still be extraordinarily inopportune. Somebody had to be there to lift the wards, after all.

Something rustled next to him and his hand flew to his wand.

A small face, illuminated by the fire, was staring up at him. Slowly, Blaise lowered his hand and scowled at Teddy. "Shouldn't you be asleep, mate?"

Teddy, never much of a talker, shrugged one eye on the basin. Suddenly, he shuffled around Blaise and pressed his face against the black man's pants.

Blaise didn't need to look down to know that several feet below them Andromeda had come out one of the tree-entrances that let to their secret Hideout intend on herding her wayward grandson back into bed. Teddy, however, didn't much care for bedtime. "Can you tell me a story?" he whispered against the leather of Blaise's trousers.

"Your Nanna is gonna have my head…"

Teddy's face fell. "Nobody ever tells me a story. Not a real one, anyway."

That was not strictly true. Teddy got a bedtime story almost every night. But Blaise knew what he meant. Teddy was a child who grew up in terrifying times and the people around him tried to make his life as normal as possible. That included bedtime stories full of unicorns, flowers and rescued princesses.

But Teddy was also a sensitive child and he knew bullshit when he heard it. Since Blaise was one of the few people who would tell it to him as it was, the boy had developed a kind of attachment to the older wizard. To say that Andromeda was not pleased would have been an understatement of epic proportions.

Teddy widened his eyes, still clutching Blaise's pants. "Pleeaassee…."

"You Nanna is gonna have my head…" It came out in a defeated sigh and Teddy grinned in certain victory. "But only if you go straight to bed after, you hear me, mate."

Teddy nodded fervently.

Sighing again, Blaise lifted Teddy onto his lap. There was nothing more boring than hunter watch – well maybe demon watch, since they had stopped attacking the camp – and entertaining Teddy was at least going to keep him awake.

"Now, where to begin…"

Teddy pouted, "You know where…"

Blaise looked down at him, one dark eyebrow raised. "Didn't you have nightmares after the last time, for like a week?" Andromeda had really threatened to hex his sorry ass into oblivion then.

But Teddy would not be deterred. "That was because of Uncle Drake, not you." He said with total conviction – and not a small amount of adoration. Apparently, Draco Malfoy's stories were on a whole different level of scary. Thinking back to their days of sitting around the common room fire, Blaise did not doubt it.

Instead, he gave Teddy a light squeeze and began.

"Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a world without demons. In this world lived a very dark, very powerful wizard."

"Voldemort," interrupted Teddy.

"Yes. But his real name was Tom Marvolo Riddle; though, not many knew it back then. He called himself Lord Voldemort and all who heard his name quivered in fear. Only a rare few were brave enough to stand up against him." Or stupid enough, he thought to himself but didn't say it out loud.

"Like my daddy," Teddy piped up again, his eyes shining.

"Like your daddy and his friends. Voldemort was so full of hatred and jealousy that he wanted to destroy our society and create a new one from the ashes; a society in which he and his followers would rule and all the rest of us were to be slaves. The first time he tried, however, he was defeated. Defeated by a child much younger than you."

"Uncle Harry!" Teddy was clearly delighted but Blaise frowned down at him

"Do you want to tell the story?" Teddy hid his grin against Blaise's shirt and shook his head no. "Well then, after your Uncle Harry defeated the Dark Lord, the whole world celebrated. To hear them tell it now, it was all sunshine and roses for a while, don't believe that sh-, well, "he caught himself just in time and cleared his throat. "Anyway, we thought we were finally safe. But Voldemort was cunning and he feared nothing so much as death. He had found a very dark, very dangerous spell and had split his soul into many pieces, ensuring that he wouldn't die unless all of those pieces had been destroyed as well. So he continued to exist, in the shadows, plotting his revenge. He had not lost those of his followers who still dreamed of a pure society. A society only for wizards whose parents and their parents before them had been wizards as well. They hated muggles and they feared them.

"And finally, when Scarhead – sorry, your Uncle Harry - was in his fourth year at Hogwarts, the dark wizard rose again from the shadows." Blaise tickled Teddy's rips, partly to take the scary out of the story and partly because the boy's peals of laughter soothed him. "Within a few years, he had regained most of his power. His greatest opponent, Albus Dumbledore, had died and the Ministry of Magic, our government, had fallen to him. He covered our world in a blanket of terror and death. Nobody was safe, not muggle-borns, not ordinary wizards, not even his own followers. Some say he had grown insane."

Teddy snuggled closer into Blaise's lap, his thumb firmly planted between his teeth.

"Yet, Voldemort had not forgotten his first painful defeat and he knew that your Uncle Harry was still out there, trying to bring him down once and for all."

"And he did," mumbled Teddy, unable to stand the suspense and needing to reassure himself.

"Eventually, he sure did. But before then the Dark Lord looked all over the world for powerful weapons to protect himself. One of them was, as we later learned, the Orb of Deliverance."

Teddy had heard that word before, but he still had trouble with it. "The oob of delivance." He said and nodded sagely. Blaise hid his smile against the boy's curls and decided against correcting him.

"Voldemort found it deep in a cave in a country called Iraq. It had been hidden there by powerful priests thousands of years ago. Of course, they assumed it would never be found, but they sure hadn't reckoned with Voldy's sheer insane determination. I don't know if Voldemort ever fully understood the Orb, but he probably thought he would be able to harness its power and use it to defeat all his enemies. He was wrong.

"However, Voldemort had been right to be afraid. Scarhead and his suicidal friends had found the hidden pieces of his soul and destroyed them. In the end, it all came down to one final battle at Hogwarts. You know this. I have told you this story before. The battle was fierce and we lost many good friends and family."

"My parents," Teddy mumbled, valiantly trying to keep a brave face. Blaise saw through it but didn't try to call the boy out.

"Yes, you know they died as heroes, saving many lives. Never doubt that, Teddy. The battle raged for almost a day and in the end, your Uncle Harry faced Lord Voldemort – not once but twice. The first time we all thought he had been killed. But his damnable luck hadn't run out and he returned to defeat Tom Riddle."

"He turned Voldy's own killing curse against him, didn't he?"

"He sure did crazy ba- eh bloke that he is. It was quite a sight to see. But, Voldy was not going down without a bang and in those last seconds, he must have realised that he was about to lose again. I don't know if he believed he was truly going to die, but he was desperate enough to unleash his final weapon. He activated the Orb.

"Now, you need to know, that the Orb connects our world to the underworld, the world of demons. It was rumoured to absorb the demons' excess power – that is the power they didn't need - and thus maintained the power balance between our world and theirs. There were also some speculations that it could transfer the demonic energy to a worthy master. Voldemort obviously believed himself to be more than worthy. He was not. Instead of harnessing thousands of demons' powers his desperate magic broke the Orb just seconds before Voldemort died."

Teddy shuddered a little against him and snuggled even closer. He didn't know that part yet – or at least only bits and pieces of it, whispered when the adults thought he couldn't hear - and he was listening with rapt attention.

"All over the planet, the fabric between our world and the underworld became paper thin. The demons' surplus of energy kept getting larger and larger, with no way to go. Have you ever seen a pot of boiling water? Do you know what happens if nobody lowers the heat, or lifts the lid? It boils over. And that is exactly what happened.

"We didn't notice at first. We celebrated Voldemort's death. We buried our dead. We put his followers on trial. And finally, we set to rebuilding our society." Blaise paused and looked into the darkness. It still hurt to remember.

Teddy grew restless. "Please, Uncle Blaise, nobody ever tells me anything. Please don't stop."

Blaise didn't. "It was about four months after the Final Battle when the pot boiled over. We had noticed strange things were happening, of course, we did, it was hard not to. Ghosts were the first ones to disappear. Then there were sightings of strange magical creatures all over the world. Creatures we had never heard of and who seemed to attack all those who possessed magic. Muggles they left alone."

"The demons?" Teddy asked, eyes blinking and Blaise could see that he was fighting to stay awake.

"Probably, or a weaker form of them. Anyway, on a mild late summer evening, much like tonight, the fabric of the world tore in several places at the same time. The creatures we now call demons streamed from the holes like a deadly flood. We tried to fight them, just as we had fought Voldemort. But they were almost immune to magic and, even worse, they seemed to be attracted to it. They overran our Ministry and villages and homes, killing many and forcing the rest into hiding. It took a while to develop a shield-charm that hid all magical signatures. It took even longer to realise just what had happened. In that time many more died and the Orbs' pieces were scattered all over the world.

"We knew the only chance we had to force the demons back into their world and to close the fabric between us, was to repair the Orb. So we set out to find the missing pieces, but that is a story for another night."

Blaise looked down at the small boy in his lap and saw that he had fallen asleep, his thumb lodged between his lips.

"You sure you did the right thing? Telling him that story?"

Blaise shifted, looked over his shoulder at the Boy-Who-Lived and shrugged. "The way I figure it, it's the world he lives in. He's got a right to know."

Harry stared out into the night. "Yes, I suppose it is."

...

A/N: I hope you enjoyed this first taste of my new story. As long as the plot bunny remains alive and well I plan on updating once a week. Don't worry Hermione and Draco will make an appearance in the next chapter (or the first chapter as that may be …)

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Chapter 1 Teaser:

"What are you doing here, Granger?"

"Hands, Malfoy", she repeated and motioned with her wand. "Don't make me say it twice."

His eyes dropped to her wand and he came slowly to his feet. "Never thought I would have to point out the obvious to you, mudblood," despite his taunting words, there wasn't much bite to his tone. He simply sounded tired, defeated. "You already said it tw-" Suddenly, his whole body snapped to attention. "Where did you get that," he hissed.

Confused, Hermione took a step back. "Wha-"

"The medallion!" He was moving towards her, his eyes intent on her left hand. "Give it to me, now!"

"Stop," Hermione screamed and fired a Stupify at him, but she stumbled over the suit of armour behind her and the hex went wide.

The next thing she knew, Draco Malfoy was on top of her, one hand gripping her wand hand with punishing force, the other grappling for the pendant she still held in her left hand.

"Let go of me," she hissed, struggling with growing desperation against him, "get off, get off, get-"

His hand found the pendant and everything went white.

Atop of her, Draco Malfoy turned his too still face to hers, his lily-white skin growing ruddy, his mouth stretching long, inhumanly long, between one ear and the other, sharp long teeth splitting his lips and dripping blood down his short stubby throat. His eyes grew small and beady, glowing a sickly yellow and his nose disappeared into his face until there were only slits left where his nostrils had been.

"And now, ma sweet", the demon drawled, his long, long tongue licking from collarbone to cheek, leaving a trail of green drool behind, "I will eat you."

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