Disclaimer: I hope by now you realize most, if not all of this is owned by the great and wonderful J. K. Rowling and her amazing talent for all things Potter, as well as Warner Brothers who I believe holds a great deal of money in the Potter name as well. Don't sue me, I don't have much for you to take. Well.. I might have a few stuffed animals.. but they're not worth much. Besides, they're old.
A/n: Well, this is the first chapter to a story I've been working on for some time. I actually came up with the idea in July, around four months ago. Since then, I've been planning it out as best I can, and writing. I can't promise quick updates, high school is quite unforgiving lately, but we'll see what I can do. I will update though, I promise. I hope you like it!
Cake and Cookies
Chapter One: I Got You Babe
"Abby, please put those back. We have cookies at home," said the young girl patiently, smiling as the toddler obeyed without complaint.
"Can we get that?"
"We have chocolate milk at home too, dear."
"Oh. Mommy, can we get this?"
"Alright, alright. We can get ice cream."
Grocery shopping with a three year old wasn't something many parents liked doing, and Hermione Granger was no exception. Small children always seemed to be able to grab more things than one would think their small arms would permit, and always managed to get them into the shopping cart before anyone noticed. Abby Granger seemed to have that gift in abundance, much to her mother's dismay many a time.
Abby was scooped up before she could add anything else to the cart and placed at her mother's hip as they finished the aisle. This was the first time Hermione had tried shopping with three-year-old Abby in awhile, for this reason exactly. Normally, there was someone to baby sit her, someone else to go pick up food or there was at least something to make for supper. Today their had been none of the above, and so, here she was, shopping with a three-year-old.
"Mommy? Can we get this?" Abby had managed to get down from her mother's grasp with a good deal of wriggling and was now standing by a large display, holding a rather large box of cereal with a picture of a tiger on it. Hermione smiled. She had no doubt the little girl only wanted it because of the tiger on the front, since the actual cereal wasn't chocolate, sugar-covered or made half out of marshmallows.
"Alright, but that's all, okay?"
"Okay mommy. Ooh! Can we get this?"
~*~
"All you bought is junk food! You don't seriously expect us all to eat nothing but cake and cookies do you?"
"Molly, you know what it's like shopping with kids, I mean, they grab everything, and anything they don't grab, they ask for!"
"I still used to get something healthy for dinner!"
"I did get something healthy. I think it's in that bag there," Hermione trailed off, searching various muggle plastic shopping bags.
"Oh, don't worry about it. I'll go shopping tomorrow and get something that's not made half out of sugar. Tonight we can order in. At least we'll have enough sweets for the next few months," Molly Weasley said with a resigned sigh as she looked over the various bags littering the kitchen floor. "We'll, at least Fred will be happy with the junk food."
"Thank-you," Hermione said with a smile.
"Of course, of course. Where's Abby?"
"With Ginny. I think she took her to the park."
"Are you sure that's... wise? Haven't you seen the muggles that have been around that park?" Molly said, her worried maternal side showing its face.
"I'm sure it's fine. Those kids only seem to come at night anyways, and besides, she's with Ginny." Molly nodded, putting away the groceries.
"Did they say when they'd be back?"
"About half an hour I think. They're never there for too long."
"Can you order pizza?" Hermione nodded, heading over to the phone and dialling. It had been a long day, and neither Hermione nor Molly Weasley felt much like cooking for the group living in the muggle flat in downtown London. One would think that a flat of its size was quite large for the area, but when it was seen how many people it held, it really was quite small, or cozy, depending if Molly was in a good mood or not. It only had two rooms, one for the women of the house, and one for the men.
The master bedroom was used for Molly, the now nineteen year old Ginny, Hermione, and her daughter Abby. The room, though cramped, was cosy enough and held all of their belongings. In the other room lived a still fairly cramped Fred and Charlie Weasley. The rest of the flat held various cluttered belongings, all clean and where they should be, yet far from 'neat'.
They were lucky, really, despite having had to revert to living as muggles. Many of their muggle or muggle-loving counterparts, loved ones and acquaintances, had not been quite so lucky. The Final Battle, as many had long suspected and even longer feared, had come in 1998, when the Golden Trio, as the many hopefuls had labelled them, were in their seventh and final year at Hogwarts. Despite the name, things did not go as planned. The valiant effort of the light side was not enough to overcome the mounting dark. The immortalized moment in history, when the great Harry Potter, the boy who lived, was no more had been ingrained upon their minds, and reoccurred in their dreams. His final breaths and his murderer's sadistic and now infamous laugh, if such a shrill, ungodly sound could even be called such, was remember by all.
Looking back, it still amazed Hermione Granger how quickly so many of the self-professed fighters of good, members of the order, and allies of Dumbledore crumbled, and dissipated in their various ways. A precious few, like the Weasleys, had managed to escape to the muggle world. Others quickly and silently changed sides, collecting supposed proof of their loyalty over the years. And then there were those who were not so lucky. Many had been killed in the Final Battle and the days following. Then again, they were sometimes considered the ones to be envied, for there were those who did not escape into either death or the muggle world, and would not yield to the side of the dark. They were the ones who were now the servants of the Dark Lord's minions and most trusted.
And so, two years after the fall of the good and the rise of the tyrants that now ruled over the Wizarding World, those who were left had fallen into a sort of pattern. They all knew of the atrocities that were committed by Voldemort and the newly instated government which he led. Another thing they knew was that the new government was not nice to rebels and those who were against, in thought, in words, or in actions, the Dark Lord. It was as if George Orwell's words had been immortalized in a bloody, hellish world by a wizard who had probably never even viewed his words.
That was why the Weasleys and Hermione lived in fear of discovery, as did all others who had escaped the Dark Lord's vengeful grasp. In order to first survive, one must learn how to drift into the darkness, how to become the scenery, how to not be caught. For nearly the past two years, this is what they had done.
~*~
At dinner that night, everyone sat around the table, an oddity in itself as usually at least one of the six residents of the flat had to work or some other event that couldn't be missed. But that night, there they sat.
"Ginny, dear, please take that out," Molly pleaded with her now grown daughter.
"Mum, I like it. It looks cool. It's really not that bad!" Ginny argued as she tried to wipe of the tomato sauce Abby had gotten on her cheeks from the pizza.
"It's in your lip! Your lip, for goodness sakes! I mean, your nose was bad enough, and the ones in your ear were tolerable at best, but your lip? Really!" Ginny seemed to have taken a page out of her older brother Bill's look. They all looked a great deal more Muggle than most would have suspected them to, she had just taken a slightly different approach to it.
Her once beautifully red hair was now various shades of pink, and she had acquired a variety of piercings. The majority of those were in her ears, although there was one in her nose, and now in her lip, and another located on her navel that her mother was still blissfully unaware of.
"Mum, leave it, please? I mean, I'm not taking it out, and it's not like it was my tongue," she said with a sigh.
"And it had better not be your tongue!" Molly exclaimed, and probably would have continued with that thought, if there hadn't been a rather loud and noticeable interruption by a large, and fairly clumsy if it came down to it, owl.
"What's an owl doing here?" Fred said. Truth be told, all of them were rather baffled by the owl's appearance. They hadn't seen one since the Order fell and Voldemort overtook as Dark Lord or some such title he had thought up. It was too risky. If they tried to contact anyone, and the letter came into the wrong hands, their safe muggle haven could be penetrated. No one would have contacted them either. Most thought them dead, and anyone who knew about them, was as exiled as they were and if they did have correspondence, it was thought muggle methods, such as the internet, something Charlie had recently found and taken quite a liking to.
Molly got up, opening a window so that the disoriented owl could enter. It did manage to get in and offer her its leg. Once she had removed its burden, the poor owl promptly started scrounging for anything near edible until Ginny finally got up and gave it some of her pizza toppings.
Molly, however, looked suddenly quite pale.
"Mum? What is it?" Charlie noticed her appearance first, helping her to her seat again. The letter fluttered from her grasp onto the table for all to see.
Hermione caught a glimpse of the signature first.
"Why on earth would Snape be writing us?"
~*~
Severus Snape sat in his sitting room, studying his glass of firewhiskey with much interest. It really was a fascinating liquid. The effect it could have on people. On him.
So he was getting hammered. Lovely term that, hammered. Muggle saying, wasn't it? What was a hammer anyways? Alright, so the alcohol was effecting him already. That had been what he wanted.
Damn them. Damn all of them. Every last one of them. He hated them. If he could just say those two words, avada kedavra on them, on each and everyone of them, he'd be content. And that included himself.
When had he wanted this? Surely he couldn't have. He couldn't have expected this, longed for this, killed for this. Damn revels. Lucius Malfoy certainly enjoyed them, they all did. It must have been at least fifteen dead tonight. An average night, in comparison with others really. He shuddered just at the thought.
With a sigh, he downed the rest of his drink and stumbling to his bed, drifting off to another restless sleep. Merlin, he hoped the letters worked.
~*~
Draco Malfoy was another story. Though he sat in similar surroundings as his Potions Professor, he on the other had wasn't trying to get himself piss drunk. He was sitting in a large comfortable arm chair, reading a document sent to him from his father. Official Malfoy Family letter head and everything. Why his father thought that would impress him was really unknown to the blonde haired man.
Rolling his eyes, he tossed the parchment onto an exquisitely decorated table that, in his opinion was really quite ugly. But it was expensive, so he had bought it. Ignoring the owl that was still waiting for Draco to write a response, he left his office with his robes trailing in a way that would have made even Snape proud.
"Draco!" came an all to familiar whiny voice from the living room.
"What is it?" Draco growled. He really wasn't in any sort of mood for this from his wife. Why couldn't she see that and leave him the bloody hell alone?
"Where have you been?" the young woman spluttered quite pathetically. Pansy Parkinson always had been somewhat over dramatic, and it seemed age had not helped her case any.
Cursing his father for suggesting he marry her, Draco sighed, waving her off rather rudely. "Business, Pansy, business."
She sniffed slightly, "Oh."
The two had wed shortly after Voldemort rose, under the careful watch of both of their fathers. Pansy had been quite delighted, and even more so when she found out she was pregnant a ridiculously short time later. Draco, on the other hand, found her to be an annoying inconvenience, and especially since now the baby was here, she was even more so.
"I'm going out," Draco snarled, not prepared to spend his night entertaining her and her child.
"But you just got home!" she said shrilly.
"And now I'm leaving," he muttered, grabbing his letter and storming out, slamming the door behind him as he left in a whirlwind of forest green and silver cloaks.
A/n: Well, this is the first chapter to a story I've been working on for some time. I actually came up with the idea in July, around four months ago. Since then, I've been planning it out as best I can, and writing. I can't promise quick updates, high school is quite unforgiving lately, but we'll see what I can do. I will update though, I promise. I hope you like it!
Cake and Cookies
Chapter One: I Got You Babe
"Abby, please put those back. We have cookies at home," said the young girl patiently, smiling as the toddler obeyed without complaint.
"Can we get that?"
"We have chocolate milk at home too, dear."
"Oh. Mommy, can we get this?"
"Alright, alright. We can get ice cream."
Grocery shopping with a three year old wasn't something many parents liked doing, and Hermione Granger was no exception. Small children always seemed to be able to grab more things than one would think their small arms would permit, and always managed to get them into the shopping cart before anyone noticed. Abby Granger seemed to have that gift in abundance, much to her mother's dismay many a time.
Abby was scooped up before she could add anything else to the cart and placed at her mother's hip as they finished the aisle. This was the first time Hermione had tried shopping with three-year-old Abby in awhile, for this reason exactly. Normally, there was someone to baby sit her, someone else to go pick up food or there was at least something to make for supper. Today their had been none of the above, and so, here she was, shopping with a three-year-old.
"Mommy? Can we get this?" Abby had managed to get down from her mother's grasp with a good deal of wriggling and was now standing by a large display, holding a rather large box of cereal with a picture of a tiger on it. Hermione smiled. She had no doubt the little girl only wanted it because of the tiger on the front, since the actual cereal wasn't chocolate, sugar-covered or made half out of marshmallows.
"Alright, but that's all, okay?"
"Okay mommy. Ooh! Can we get this?"
~*~
"All you bought is junk food! You don't seriously expect us all to eat nothing but cake and cookies do you?"
"Molly, you know what it's like shopping with kids, I mean, they grab everything, and anything they don't grab, they ask for!"
"I still used to get something healthy for dinner!"
"I did get something healthy. I think it's in that bag there," Hermione trailed off, searching various muggle plastic shopping bags.
"Oh, don't worry about it. I'll go shopping tomorrow and get something that's not made half out of sugar. Tonight we can order in. At least we'll have enough sweets for the next few months," Molly Weasley said with a resigned sigh as she looked over the various bags littering the kitchen floor. "We'll, at least Fred will be happy with the junk food."
"Thank-you," Hermione said with a smile.
"Of course, of course. Where's Abby?"
"With Ginny. I think she took her to the park."
"Are you sure that's... wise? Haven't you seen the muggles that have been around that park?" Molly said, her worried maternal side showing its face.
"I'm sure it's fine. Those kids only seem to come at night anyways, and besides, she's with Ginny." Molly nodded, putting away the groceries.
"Did they say when they'd be back?"
"About half an hour I think. They're never there for too long."
"Can you order pizza?" Hermione nodded, heading over to the phone and dialling. It had been a long day, and neither Hermione nor Molly Weasley felt much like cooking for the group living in the muggle flat in downtown London. One would think that a flat of its size was quite large for the area, but when it was seen how many people it held, it really was quite small, or cozy, depending if Molly was in a good mood or not. It only had two rooms, one for the women of the house, and one for the men.
The master bedroom was used for Molly, the now nineteen year old Ginny, Hermione, and her daughter Abby. The room, though cramped, was cosy enough and held all of their belongings. In the other room lived a still fairly cramped Fred and Charlie Weasley. The rest of the flat held various cluttered belongings, all clean and where they should be, yet far from 'neat'.
They were lucky, really, despite having had to revert to living as muggles. Many of their muggle or muggle-loving counterparts, loved ones and acquaintances, had not been quite so lucky. The Final Battle, as many had long suspected and even longer feared, had come in 1998, when the Golden Trio, as the many hopefuls had labelled them, were in their seventh and final year at Hogwarts. Despite the name, things did not go as planned. The valiant effort of the light side was not enough to overcome the mounting dark. The immortalized moment in history, when the great Harry Potter, the boy who lived, was no more had been ingrained upon their minds, and reoccurred in their dreams. His final breaths and his murderer's sadistic and now infamous laugh, if such a shrill, ungodly sound could even be called such, was remember by all.
Looking back, it still amazed Hermione Granger how quickly so many of the self-professed fighters of good, members of the order, and allies of Dumbledore crumbled, and dissipated in their various ways. A precious few, like the Weasleys, had managed to escape to the muggle world. Others quickly and silently changed sides, collecting supposed proof of their loyalty over the years. And then there were those who were not so lucky. Many had been killed in the Final Battle and the days following. Then again, they were sometimes considered the ones to be envied, for there were those who did not escape into either death or the muggle world, and would not yield to the side of the dark. They were the ones who were now the servants of the Dark Lord's minions and most trusted.
And so, two years after the fall of the good and the rise of the tyrants that now ruled over the Wizarding World, those who were left had fallen into a sort of pattern. They all knew of the atrocities that were committed by Voldemort and the newly instated government which he led. Another thing they knew was that the new government was not nice to rebels and those who were against, in thought, in words, or in actions, the Dark Lord. It was as if George Orwell's words had been immortalized in a bloody, hellish world by a wizard who had probably never even viewed his words.
That was why the Weasleys and Hermione lived in fear of discovery, as did all others who had escaped the Dark Lord's vengeful grasp. In order to first survive, one must learn how to drift into the darkness, how to become the scenery, how to not be caught. For nearly the past two years, this is what they had done.
~*~
At dinner that night, everyone sat around the table, an oddity in itself as usually at least one of the six residents of the flat had to work or some other event that couldn't be missed. But that night, there they sat.
"Ginny, dear, please take that out," Molly pleaded with her now grown daughter.
"Mum, I like it. It looks cool. It's really not that bad!" Ginny argued as she tried to wipe of the tomato sauce Abby had gotten on her cheeks from the pizza.
"It's in your lip! Your lip, for goodness sakes! I mean, your nose was bad enough, and the ones in your ear were tolerable at best, but your lip? Really!" Ginny seemed to have taken a page out of her older brother Bill's look. They all looked a great deal more Muggle than most would have suspected them to, she had just taken a slightly different approach to it.
Her once beautifully red hair was now various shades of pink, and she had acquired a variety of piercings. The majority of those were in her ears, although there was one in her nose, and now in her lip, and another located on her navel that her mother was still blissfully unaware of.
"Mum, leave it, please? I mean, I'm not taking it out, and it's not like it was my tongue," she said with a sigh.
"And it had better not be your tongue!" Molly exclaimed, and probably would have continued with that thought, if there hadn't been a rather loud and noticeable interruption by a large, and fairly clumsy if it came down to it, owl.
"What's an owl doing here?" Fred said. Truth be told, all of them were rather baffled by the owl's appearance. They hadn't seen one since the Order fell and Voldemort overtook as Dark Lord or some such title he had thought up. It was too risky. If they tried to contact anyone, and the letter came into the wrong hands, their safe muggle haven could be penetrated. No one would have contacted them either. Most thought them dead, and anyone who knew about them, was as exiled as they were and if they did have correspondence, it was thought muggle methods, such as the internet, something Charlie had recently found and taken quite a liking to.
Molly got up, opening a window so that the disoriented owl could enter. It did manage to get in and offer her its leg. Once she had removed its burden, the poor owl promptly started scrounging for anything near edible until Ginny finally got up and gave it some of her pizza toppings.
Molly, however, looked suddenly quite pale.
"Mum? What is it?" Charlie noticed her appearance first, helping her to her seat again. The letter fluttered from her grasp onto the table for all to see.
Hermione caught a glimpse of the signature first.
"Why on earth would Snape be writing us?"
~*~
Severus Snape sat in his sitting room, studying his glass of firewhiskey with much interest. It really was a fascinating liquid. The effect it could have on people. On him.
So he was getting hammered. Lovely term that, hammered. Muggle saying, wasn't it? What was a hammer anyways? Alright, so the alcohol was effecting him already. That had been what he wanted.
Damn them. Damn all of them. Every last one of them. He hated them. If he could just say those two words, avada kedavra on them, on each and everyone of them, he'd be content. And that included himself.
When had he wanted this? Surely he couldn't have. He couldn't have expected this, longed for this, killed for this. Damn revels. Lucius Malfoy certainly enjoyed them, they all did. It must have been at least fifteen dead tonight. An average night, in comparison with others really. He shuddered just at the thought.
With a sigh, he downed the rest of his drink and stumbling to his bed, drifting off to another restless sleep. Merlin, he hoped the letters worked.
~*~
Draco Malfoy was another story. Though he sat in similar surroundings as his Potions Professor, he on the other had wasn't trying to get himself piss drunk. He was sitting in a large comfortable arm chair, reading a document sent to him from his father. Official Malfoy Family letter head and everything. Why his father thought that would impress him was really unknown to the blonde haired man.
Rolling his eyes, he tossed the parchment onto an exquisitely decorated table that, in his opinion was really quite ugly. But it was expensive, so he had bought it. Ignoring the owl that was still waiting for Draco to write a response, he left his office with his robes trailing in a way that would have made even Snape proud.
"Draco!" came an all to familiar whiny voice from the living room.
"What is it?" Draco growled. He really wasn't in any sort of mood for this from his wife. Why couldn't she see that and leave him the bloody hell alone?
"Where have you been?" the young woman spluttered quite pathetically. Pansy Parkinson always had been somewhat over dramatic, and it seemed age had not helped her case any.
Cursing his father for suggesting he marry her, Draco sighed, waving her off rather rudely. "Business, Pansy, business."
She sniffed slightly, "Oh."
The two had wed shortly after Voldemort rose, under the careful watch of both of their fathers. Pansy had been quite delighted, and even more so when she found out she was pregnant a ridiculously short time later. Draco, on the other hand, found her to be an annoying inconvenience, and especially since now the baby was here, she was even more so.
"I'm going out," Draco snarled, not prepared to spend his night entertaining her and her child.
"But you just got home!" she said shrilly.
"And now I'm leaving," he muttered, grabbing his letter and storming out, slamming the door behind him as he left in a whirlwind of forest green and silver cloaks.