A/N - This is my new collection series - After The End. Each piece posted in this series corresponds with a story I've already written, and will add a little more detail about what happened after the end of the story. Like my other collection series, this will have no set update days and will not be marked as complete. New pieces will be added randomly as I write them.
I do have a lot of plans for this series, but I am still very interested in knowing anything people would like a piece about. Feel free to let me know what stories you want including in this series, what questions you would like answering, or what you would like to know more about. I will promise to do as many as I can in between writing my longer stories.
This first piece is from The Mistress? I do actually have another piece written for this story, and it will be published at a later date, but I decided to start with this one as it was one of the first pieces for this collection I wrote. so obviously some stories will have a couple of pieces in this collection. I hope you all enjoy the first piece in this collection, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the series.
The Mistress?
The sun was just rising, yet Hermione Malfoy had been awake for hours. While her husband slumbered peacefully in their king sized bed, Hermione was curled up beside the window, watching the sun rise on a new day, and a new month. September. The month her precious children left home and headed off to Hogwarts for the first time.
"Stupid boarding school," she muttered to herself.
As a student at Hogwarts she hadn't seen a problem with the magical school being one the students stayed at for most of the year, but as a parent she viewed things differently. Why did Hogwarts need for the pupils to stay at the castle? Or at the very least, why didn't they have a day only option? But then again, part of the experience of attending Hogwarts was living in the castle, and even though she was dreading the thought of the twins leaving, she wouldn't deny them the opportunity to go to Hogwarts for anything in the world. Especially as it hadn't always been guaranteed that the twins would even be attending the magical school.
Thanks to the difficulties Hermione had endured in regards to earlier pregnancies, the twins very existence had been severely aided by magic, and as a result there'd been a chance they would be squibs. Throughout the pregnancy and in the twins very first few months, she and everyone else had insisted that magic wasn't important and they would love them regardless. And while that was perfectly true, it was only after the twins had been born, that Hermione realised just how difficult having no magic would be for the twins themselves.
As a muggleborn, Hermione herself had grown up unaware of her magical ability and she knew it was possible for a child to have a happy childhood without magic. However, the twins were not in a world without magic, and even if they hadn't possessed any magic, they were still part of a magical family. Magic was everywhere in their lives, and all Hermione could see were the problems her children would face if in the magical world if they didn't have magic.
As it was, neither of the twins showed any signs of magic in the first two years of their lives. Apparently by that point the majority of magical children had already experienced their first burst of accidental magic, and that was when Hermione and Draco began to think about what would happen if the twins didn't have magic. In fact they'd even started discussing the fact it might be better for the twins to live in the muggle world by the time the twins second birthday had rolled around. But then their birthday party changed everything.
While blowing out their candles, with the help of Draco and Hermione, Scorpius had sneezed and accidentally doused the flames before Lyra got a chance to try and blow them out. When Lyra had started to cry and get upset, the candles had flickered back to life. Initially Draco and Hermione had thought the other one had done it to keep the peace, but every time the candles went out either Scorpius and Lyra began to cry and they relit themselves. That was when they realised it was their accidental magic, relighting the candles to keep them happy.
Hermione would have liked to say that from there on it was plain sailing and her children had excelled at magic, but it wasn't the case. Their bursts of accidental magic were infrequent, and not always as strong as the birthday incident. As they grew older, Draco had started teaching them how to control their magic, as his parents had done with him, but it had been slow going. It had taken both children a significant amount of time to wield any sort of control over their magic.
Although Hermione had to admit even that had changed over the last eighteen months. Just recently the twins had really started to control and master their magic. Thanks to the books they always had their noses stuck in, a habit inherited from both of their parents, they were both very smart and it was starting to show in their magic. With each passing day they were getting better and better, and Hermione knew their skills would only increase once they were at Hogwarts and were receiving expert tutelage from the highly skilled Professors.
Hermione was only hoping that a pressured learning environment wouldn't be too much for them. She and Draco had always made it clear that they could learn things in their own time, and they'd never put any pressure on them when they'd been struggling. And even though they were now so much better with their magic, Hermione was still worried about how they would cope with the lessons at Hogwarts. The last thing she wanted was for them to feel inferior to their classmates. She wanted them to enjoy their years at Hogwarts, not view them as years of torture.
She was also worried how they would cope if they were sorted into separate houses. The pair were as close as anything, and Hermione didn't know how they would cope if they were separated for any length of time. Although she knew Draco wasn't worried about the possibility, as not only did he assure her that they were far tougher than she wanted to admit, he also believed that they were so similar they would be sorted together. And by together, he meant into Slytherin as that was where her husband believed they belonged. Although to be fair, he was probably right as the twins were little scamps, and of course they'd had excellent role models, in Draco and their grandfather, Lucius, who spoiled them rotten.
So caught up in her thoughts, Hermione failed to notice Draco waking up and getting out of bed. It wasn't until her husband pressed a light kiss to the top of head that she even realised the sun was well and truly up and the twins would be bounding up soon, no doubt excited to be starting Hogwarts.
"Don't," Draco ordered her.
"Don't what?" Hermione questioned, even though she knew full well that without having to say anything, Draco had picked up on her anxieties.
"Worry about the twins," Draco answered. "They're going to be great."
"I'm their mother, it's my job to worry," Hermione retorted.
"But not about things that are unnecessary," Draco argued gently. "The twins will cope just fine. So what if they won't master a spell in the first couple of attempts. It might even take them the whole lesson to get it right. It doesn't matter. They'll get there, and you know as well as I do that once they've performed a spell once they can perfect it within a couple more tries. They won't be bottom of the class, Hermione."
"I know," Hermione admitted with a sigh. "And I know that they'll be able to cope if they are sorted into separate houses."
"I honestly believe they will be sorted into Slytherin, but I do sometimes think they would be perfect Gryffindors," Draco confessed reluctantly. "They're both so gutsy, and quite honestly I think they're stronger than either of us given them credit for. Now, you've got to promise me never to reveal to anyone that I considered my children to be part Gryffindor."
"And just what is a promise like that worth?" Hermione teased. "I'd want something in return for keeping that secret."
"You can have anything you want," Draco replied with a grin, pleased he was able to alleviate some of the tension surrounding his wife.
"I'm sure I can think of something," Hermione purred, giving her husband a kiss as her hand slid around his back and squeezed his bare backside. While she'd slid a robe over her nakedness when she'd gotten up, Draco hadn't bothered with modesty and he was stark bollock naked.
"I don't suppose you fancy joining me in the shower?" Draco asked hopefully.
"Not this morning, I've got too much to do," Hermione replied with a shake of her head. "But we'll have plenty of mornings to fill once the twins are off at Hogwarts and they're not up at the crack of dawn wanting feeding."
"Now I understand why my parents were so thrilled when I started Hogwarts," Draco chuckled. "They just wanted the manor to themselves."
"I guess you could have a lot of fun in a big house with no children underfoot," Hermione remarked.
"And isn't it a good job we've got a big house?" Draco grinned, flashing Hermione a sinful wink as he headed off to use the bathroom.
Suddenly feeling much brighter, Hermione used the bathroom after her husband and once she was dressed she headed downstairs in a bright mood. As expected the twins were virtually bouncing off the walls, and they couldn't wait to get off to Hogwarts and start their new adventure. In the fact of such exuberance, Hermione couldn't help but be thrilled for her children, and all she hoped was that they loved Hogwarts as much as she had. As long as they were happy, she was happy, even if she was going to miss them like crazy.
It was rather nostalgic for Hermione and Draco as they saw the twins off to Hogwarts for the first time, and even though she was happy for them, Hermione still got a bit teary eyed as the Hogwarts Express pulled out of the station and her children were whisked away up to Scotland. Now she just had to hope that they wrote to her as promised and she would find out what house, or houses, they'd been sorted into.
Luckily for Hermione she'd raised her children well and as promised a letter arrived for her and Draco that very evening. The letter was in Lyra's handwriting, but when Hermione opened the parchment she spotted her son's signature at the bottom of the letter. Obviously Lyra had written for the pair of them, and Scorpius had just signed his name at the end.
"What do they have to say?" Draco asked expectantly as Hermione read the letter. "How long did it take the sorting hat to realise they were perfect little Slytherins?"
"Read it for yourself," Hermione said, casually handing the letter over to her husband.
As Draco read the letter, Hermione chuckled as his expression changed from smug to stunned. Several times he shook his head as he re-read parts of the letter and when he looked up at Hermione, he looked totally flabbergasted.
"It can't be happening," he muttered.
"Oh yes it can," Hermione laughed. "Your perfect little Slytherins are really perfect little Gryffindors."
"But both of them," Draco spluttered. "Not even Lyra stayed loyal. Wait until father hears about this."
"Do you honestly think Lyra wouldn't have wrote to him as well?" Hermione chuckled, still highly amused by her husband's reaction. "I bet that right now, he's reading a letter from Lyra informing him of exactly the same thing."
And of course, Hermione was right, and she and Draco were learning the news that the twins were both in Gryffindor, at Malfoy Manor, Lucius and Narcissa were doing the same. Not that Lucius was anywhere near as shocked as his son. His grandchildren were tough little fighters, and even there was a liberal side of Slytherin to their character, deep down they were true lionhearts. After all, they'd defied the odds both to be born, and to then to have magic, so where better place for two such children than the brave house of Gryffindor.