Author's Note:

So hey everyone, it's been a while, huh? As you can see this is, obviously, a new story that I really have no business starting. However, it has been bouncing around in my head for a while and I'm curious to see what the masses think. I confess, the basic plot of it is not entirely new for me. It will have some echoes of No Day But Today and for those of you who were waiting on the reposting and/or continuation of Changes, this will be the closest that you will be getting. Sorry Not Sorry.

While we are on the subject briefly, my other stories are still in production. Not going strong but…going. So, yeah, if you are waiting for NDBT Drabbles (or the companion Severus/ Lily story) or The Lupin Childe, well, you're getting this instead but they will be coming along eventually. Actually, I have genuine plans for TLC, which I predict many of you will hate. Have fun with that lack of information.

Back to this story though!

I wrote a timeline for it (which I then promptly loss). So I'm actually kinda serious about it. The first chapter goes pretty fast, before it slows significantly. Actually, it's mostly just background and a continuation of the prologue.

Summary: "Wow," the man said and Harry glanced back up only to find himself being stared at. He flushed. "What?" he muttered, dropping his gaze back to his dropped parcels. "You're eyes…I've never…" Harry scoffed. He knew a piss poor pick up line when he heard it. "Let me guess," he smiled mockingly. "You've never seen eyes so green." The man shook his head, standing with a frown. "I've never seen eyes so sad."

Warnings: Slash, M-preg, OOC-ness, drama, angst amongst other things. Time line is all jacked, and many events are AU, obviously. Some things may come across as character bashing but that's honestly not my intention. There will also be time skips galore. Hope everything doesn't get too confusing. There will be a few Original Characters, not too many though. Also, a lot of made up and completely inaccurate ideas about law.

Parinings: Past H. Potter/ D. Malfoy, H. Potter/ OMC, D. Malfoy/ A. Greengrass, R. Weasley/ H. Granger

Prologue

February

Harry Potter envied Teddy Lupin. It was an odd thought to have about a baby boy, barely old enough to toddle, but I was the one that passed absently through the Potter Heir's head as he gently bedded down his year old godson on the cold February evening.

Teddy, he thought, as he removed the little boy's tiny black dress robes, had absolutely no worries. He was too young to realize that his life had just changed forever. That his grandmother had passed on just a few days before, that the reason he had spent all day being held just a little too snugly by his godfather was because they had been at the elder woman's funeral. He hadn't the slightest inkling that he had just become a ward of a young man who was under much too much stress and hadn't the faintest idea as to how to take care of a child full time. Instead, he was peacefully sleeping away, dreaming whatever it was baby's dreamed about, his hair flickering lazily through different shades of blue as his godfather tucked him into his cot carefully. Dull green eyes watched the infant sleeping for a number of minutes before the young man behind them sighed tiredly and retired to his own bedroom next door and threw himself ungracefully across his bed.

Harry stared at the wall, not seeing it but instead imagining Andromeda's kind eyes and gentle smile, both entirely too similar to her insane, dead sister, but different as well. Harry missed her already, deeply and wholeheartedly. He hadn't known her very long but she had become much like a beloved aunt to him in the short time he had spent with her.

After the Battle of Hogwarts and the untimely deaths of her husband, daughter and son-in-law, Andromeda had fallen into a depression that even her newborn grandson could no pull her out of. Harry, feeling responsible for both his small godson and the woman who had lost everything thanks to him, had timidly offered to drop by as often as she needed to help with Teddy and to allow her time to grieve. Andromeda had stiffly accepted but over the course of his visits they had grown closer through Teddy and their joint losses. Andromeda had determinedly pulled herself together and deemed it her responsibility to look after Harry as well as Teddy since he was, she said, despite what everyone had expected of him, still a child himself.

As it were, she hadn't becoming overbearing or tried to bully her way into his personal affairs, she'd just done small thing for him. She'd learned his favorite meals and would cook them every weekend. She'd make him tea when he came in late from the reconstruction projects he'd been helping with, with just the right amount of cream and sugar and ask about his day with genuine interest. She had made the guest room 'officially' his and on the nights he would spend there, she'd pretend not to notice when he would linger outside of Teddy's nursery as she read the little boy bedtime stories or sung when he became fussy because she knew it would embarrass him if she invited him to come in and listen properly. Those and hundreds of other small, inconsequential things are what Harry loved about her and what he would miss terribly now that she was gone.

"Andy," he whispered to the wall, voice muffled by the bedspread on the side of his face. "What am I supposed to do? Teddy needs you. I need you." For the first time since he'd found her still tucked into her bed when he'd entered her room a week ago, he let the tears that had built up in his eyes fall. "I don't know what to do," he muttered pitifully, burying his face into his pillows trying to hide from the reality of the world. One of his hands wrapped around his middle as his frame curled into a loose fetal position. "Help me."

There was no answer to his plea, of course, just his own shuddered breathing in the eerily quiet house she'd left him. She had, after all, known she was dying and had changed her will accordingly, not that she'd told him.

As he drifted into a restless sleep, just one of many he had had over the years and would continue to have in the coming ones, he wondered through his grief just how he would manage to take care of two small children in just a few months' time without a soul to help him.