Birthdays

"JAMES SIRIUS POTTER, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?" The first words that Rose heard upon waking on this most important day were, like most of those at her grandparents' house, directed at her cousin. Here it was, her eleventh birthday, the day when she would, most assuredly, join the rest of her family in the Wizarding world, and James was ruining it by being perfectly awful.

He was probably shoving spiders in his brother's porridge, something that Albus had, in her opinion, probably done nothing to deserve. The younger of the two brothers had inherited the charm (and the looks) of his famous father, while somehow escaping all of his mischievousness. He was the perpetual victim of all the cousins' pranks, never seeming to know how to escape them. James on the other hand was a Weasley from head to toe, his hair was a darker red than that of his many cousins, but he had all of the prankster qualities that his uncles, both living and dead would have treasured.

"It's okay Gramma." The high-pitched voice of Lily, the youngest of that set of cousins carried up the stairs. "He was only trying to get Al to give me a chocolate frog." Lily was, even at nine, always saving the older brother she adored.

"Alright then, but he'd better stop, you have no need of chocolate frogs at this hour." Lily seemed to have calmed Molly down, at least enough so that Rose was willing to risk getting up.

Sliding her feet to the floor she shivered, it was cold in the Burrow despite the fact that was still the middle of August. Once she had gotten used to the temperature she skipped across the room to get dressed, pulling on the first pair of jeans she found, ignoring the fact that they were several inches too short for her gangly legs and topping that with a Gryffindor sweater she had inherited from her father's school days.

Then, nearly bursting with excitement, she bounded down the stairs only to find, to her great disappointment, that there was nothing even remotely out of place in her grandparent's kitchen. The three cousins who had, like her and her younger brother Hugo, spent the night at the Burrow were enjoying a delicious-looking, but ordinary breakfast with her grandparents, all of them looking as if James had not just done something horrible to his younger brother.

Trying to keep the smile that had previously felt immovable on her face, Rose sat down and helped herself to some bacon. Watching the look on her face go from overwhelming excitement to complete despair was too much for James, before she could even finish one piece of bacon he had gotten up from his chair and danced around the room yelling for the world to hear about how Rose had believed she had got no presents. Seeing the look on Rose's face, Molly gave James a stern look before bundling him out of doors with an order about cleaning the chicken coop, a chore that James detested.

"Darling we're doing presents after lunch, once your parents have arrived." Molly smiled warmly at her granddaughter as she shovelled more food onto her plate. "But really dear eat some breakfast and then go change, your nice dress is on the chair in your room, and those jeans are much too short..." She continued rambling on about Rose's clothing, but Rose, safe with the reaffirmations of her family's love ignored her and enjoyed the delicious meal.

Lunch was a quiet affair by Rose's standards, her parents took her to a Muggle restaurant for a nice meal before bringing her back to the Burrow. In the short time that they had been gone the entire place had been transformed, piles of presents had appeared all over the yard and giant red and gold balloons were scattered around the enormous tent that had been set up. The house also had a vague feeling of being on fire due to the many red-haired relatives who were in attendance.

Glancing briefly around the yard Rose smiled like the 11-year-old she was and jumped straight into opening her presents. Many of them were useful things that she would need for school, robes, cauldrons, and the like, but she also got plenty of things that she did not need, much of it coming from her uncles' shop Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Her favourite present, though, was a tiny owl, much like the one her father had had in his youth.

To top of the festivities an owl from Hogwarts appeared halfway through dinner to give her the official welcome she had been waiting for, Rose Weasley was a witch, and in two weeks time she would be heading for Hogwarts. This was quite possibly the best news of her short life and she spent the entire rest of the party with the letter clutched tightly in her hand. She held onto it long after she had fallen asleep, she only let go of it when her mother Hermione put her in her own bed at home and gently prised it out of her hand, reading over it herself in preparation of the shopping they would have to do.

That very same day, on the other side of the country, another child was far less happy to celebrate his birthday. Scorpius Malfoy was, despite the striking resemblance, very different from his father, far from celebrating his roots the way his family had for generations Scorpius was more inclined to hate his family for the shame that the entire Wizarding world placed upon them.

After narrowly escaping Azkaban on the actions of his mother, Draco had hidden away from the world that had now turned against him. Marrying another survivor of the Death Eater's ranks, Astoria Greengrass, he had slipped into the obscure life of a family man, working as a consultant for Borgin and Burke's when absolutely necessary, but mostly just living off his family's ancient wealth. It had been, for the past nineteen years, a simple, and less than horrible, life.

But today, the secrecy would finally start to come down for Scorpius, prized heir and only child of the Malfoys had finally reached the age of eleven, it was time for him to start at Hogwarts. This was not, in Scorpius' mind, a good thing at all, on those rare occasions in which he had ventured out in public with his father they had been followed by stairs and on occasion, jeers. His father had told him the entire story of the Second Wizarding War, so the reason behind the stairs was not a mystery. And now, when he was off to school, he would be followed by that sort of attention everywhere, and so, it was this day, August 16th that he had come to dread. He did want to learn magic, he wasn't so strange as to want to avoid that, he just wished that he could learn it without having to interact with any students.

Knowing his father would expect him to appear with dignity today of all days, and knowing that his father expected him to join in the pride that he had for their family Scorpius dressed carefully in a black suit that, far from making him look frightening, emphasized the smallness of his body and the pointed paleness of his face. Brushing his hair back carefully as he walked down the stairs, Scorpius sighed, this would be a long year.

Disclaimer: As you all should know...I am not the creator, nor the owner of the Harry Potter universe.