Rose placed Kate in the high chair and snapped the bib around her neck. She may be two, but she was the messiest eater in the world, even worse than Rose's dad, and Rose didn't feel like cleaning up the entire kitchen.
Mia and Cassie had finished their lunch and were on the living room floor, watching their stuffed animals battle each other. It was a charm Rose had learned how to do when she was pregnant with Cassie because she couldn't play with Mia as much and Scorpius was away on his mission. So she set stuffed animals on her.
Rose sighed and placed Kate's plate of food in front of her, checking again to make sure that Kate's hair was securely behind the headband so it couldn't get in the way of her food.
The fireplace lit up and Lily stepped out, right into the battlefield.
"Aunt Lily, Alice is going to eat you!" Cassie shrieked as the little bunny jumped and latched onto Lily's leg.
Lily waved her wand and the bunny began to attack Cassie. Her giggles mounted as Lily walked into the kitchen to Rose. "Hey, how're you doing?" she asked, taking the empty seat next to her cousin.
Rose shrugged. "Alright, I guess. Just felt like checking up on me or were you sent to?"
Lily smiled and tossed her hair behind her shoulder. "Now, would I ever do something like that to you?"
Rose raised an eyebrow.
"Vic sent me," Lily admitted. "But then I decided, on my own thank you very much, that you'd like me to stay with you here until Scorpius gets back. Our mums might be joining the party as well, if that's alright, considering their husbands are gone, too."
Rose grinned. "Sounds absolutely alright with me." Internally, she sighed in relief. The house was already feeling empty, even though it was nowhere near large, with just her and the girls in it. "I'd love it if you stayed."
"I knew you would," Lily gloated and laughed. "I'll go get my bags after the girls fall asleep, how's that?"
"Sounds good," Rose nodded. "Oh, no," she said in dismay as she looked over at her youngest daughter, asleep in the high chair and covered in food.
Lily giggled. She glanced over at the other two girls, who were now throwing their animals at each other with violent sounds. "Is it always this hectic around here?"
Rose scoffed. "Oh, please, this is so relaxed. Nowhere near hectic. Hectic is when I'm trying to take a shower and I hear Mia screaming and I bolt out of the bathroom, barely a towel on, and find a fire on top of the stove with Scorpius attempting to stop it with the pan while Cassie has somehow become covered in syrup and Kate is throwing clumped handfuls of yogurt at everyone."
Lily laughed. "When did this happen?"
Rose thought for a second. "Four days ago."
"Oh, Jeez," Lily marveled. "If my flat was ever that noisy I might die."
Rose laughed as she wiped the food off Kate's face. "That's what happens when you live alone."
Lily sighed and wiped her eyes dramatically. "It's what happens when the person you had planned on living with gets pregnant, has a baby, and moves in with her husband-to-be."
Rose stuck her tongue out at her would've-been roommate.
"So, guess who I saw the other day?" Lily leaned over towards Rose and lowered her voice.
Rose bit back a chuckle. The Weasley-Potter Family, what a gossip mill. "Who?"
"Louis."
"So?" Rose asked. It wasn't uncommon for one of them to stumble across another. There were too many of them to not do so.
"You'll never guess who he was with."
"Santa?"
"No."
"Kurt Russell?"
"Come on, at least make your guesses possible answers."
Rose sighed. "Anyone we're related to?"
Lily shook her head.
"Anyone we're friends with? We know?"
"We know them, but we were never really friends with them."
"Did they go to Hogwarts?"
"Yup," Lily smirked. "You'll never guess."
"Then why are you making me try?"
"It was Eric Hensworth."
"So? Weren't they friends?"
"Honey, what I saw, you wouldn't do with a friend," Lily smirked.
"What are you talking about?" Rose asked, pulling a piece of carrot out of Kate's hair and wiping her face off as she still slept soundly.
"They were snogging!"
Rose's jaw dropped. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm saying that our cousin, Louis Weasley, is not straight."
"Why hasn't he said anything?" Rose blurted.
Lily sighed dramatically. "I don't know. Aren't we trustworthy? Aren't we supportive?"
Rose picked Kate up out of the high chair and pointed her wand absentmindedly at the TV and it flickered on, turning the older girls' attention towards it and away from the stove.
She started walking up the stairs and Lily followed her. "Maybe he was planning on telling us soon."
Lily snorted as Rose deposited Kate in the crib and pulled the shades down to dim the sun streaming in and make her more comfortable.
Rose shut the door and started to whisper with Lily out in the hallway. "Are you going to say anything about it to him?"
Lily pondered it for a bit. "Probably not. If he hasn't told us then he doesn't want us to know."
Rose nodded. "Maybe he'll say something soon anyways."
"That's not all," Lily smirked.
"What now?" Rose sighed.
"Callie's pregnant!"
"What?" Rose cried, ecstatic.
Lily nodded happily and the two of them jumped up and down.
"I came by on the weekend to visit them and I saw the test in the trash can in the bathroom," Lily grinned. "She told me to shut up," Lily laughed, "said she was telling James later."
Lily grinned again. "I'm gonna be an aunt!"
Rose laughed. "God, James, married. That was practically unbelievable. But James as a father? Yikes!"
"Two professional Quidditch players married and parents. That should not be allowed," Lily said. "And, the dad has Auror training, too. Poor, kid." Lily paused and smiled. "Callie will be a great mum, though. She'll be like you with your kids. Their mum and best friend."
Rose felt a little warmth run through her. "You really think I'm that good of a mum?"
Lily nodded. "Of course I do. Whenever I come over here I always wish that when, if, I have kids I'm as good with them as you are with yours."
"Aw, Lils," Rose said, feeling like she was tearing up a bit.
"Are you crying?" Lily asked, stunned.
"It's been a teary kind of day. And that just means so much, you know," Rose fanned her face, desperate for the tears to go away. "I've always wondered if I was actually a good mum, what with the whole getting-pregnant-at-seventeen thing."
Lily hugged Rose gently. "Of course you're a great mum. Oh, by the way, Nana told everyone to come over for dinner today. She wanted everyone to be together while 'so many of our lovely husbands and sons are off gallivanting across the world capturing those terrible people'," Lily swooned in Molly's voice.
Rose giggled. "Come on, I'm going to make the girls take a nap now so they'll be awake later. They sleep so dead to the world that we could run around the house shooting whipped cream and canned cheese at each other and they wouldn't notice."
Lily giggled. "I wonder if James will have the struck dumb look on his face that everyone else in this family had when they discovered they were going to be parents. It was such a dead giveaway when they didn't say anything."
Rose sent the girls upstairs to their beds to sleep and turned the TV off.
"Remember Teddy's face?" Rose said as they walked down to the kitchen. "He looked like he'd been hit by a bludger then petrificus totalis-ed. It was hilarious."
Lily nodded and sat down at the kitchen table, rubbing her hand across the rough and worn surface as Rose set a cup of tea down in front of her and sat across from her with her own mug.
"Ready for tonight?" Lily asked, sipping some of her tea.
Rose sighed and slumped in her seat. "When will anyone ever be ready to go to the Burrow? Especially when it's Nana's way of checking up on all of those whose husbands are off chasing bad guys."
"You'll survive," Lily smiled. "You always do."