A/N: That awkward moment when I try to write something emotionally compromising and ruin it in the first thousand words with crass jokes about masturbation and bestiality...anyways. Thanks for reviewing Blood and Dark Chocolate, Sarnia Nereid, Tom (Dude, you totally reviewed twice. it was awesome), FairyLightsAndGlitter, CurlyFries01, Guest, YaoiFreak-0ww0, Fionamoi, and Charlottembp. It sort of makes me laugh that most of your reviews were along the lines of "God, fucking Hugo, grrr" (rough approximation provided by me) and only two of you made any sort of comment about Scorpius's child, but you know, I can kind of respect that as well. Very well, carry on. Also, for your viewing pleasure, the only character I've cast in my head: news/2013-07-30/doctor-who-peter-capaldi-favourite -to-replace-matt-smith (I tried to just put the link to an image and bad things happened. Sorry if any of you were attempting radio silence until the Christmas Special)

Chapter Thirteen - Whoever Said Time Heals All Wounds Was Full of Shit

Dylan took the news about Hugo's true colours poorly. It turned out that he had actually liked Hugo and the fact that Hugo had been using him didn't sit well.

"Let's get him addicted to drugs and then make him go through withdrawals," Dylan suggested, holding his head in his hands while he sat at the bar in the kitchen.

"That would make him more suspicious," I pointed out. "Since he's a fuck."

"You guys all suspected, didn't you?" Dylan asked.

"Only us and Will," Rose replied, nodding at me and reaching around me to grab the coffee. Seeing as it was Rose, this meant she stood directly in front of me and leaned against me in order to grab the coffee pot, touching much more of my person than necessary. I frowned at the top of her curly hair.

"Em mostly tried to stay out of it while giving us disapproving looks and Sam didn't mind him since Hugo didn't mind Sam's Charms babble," I explained. "But Rose, and Will, and Al and I were not fond."

"I can't believe I almost got us caught," Dylan replied, hitting his head on the counter.

"Don't beat yourself up about it," I said. "But know that you'll be getting the next contract tattoo."

"That's fair," Dylan agreed.

"I think they want the word 'Dunce' tattooed across your forehead," Al piped up from the other end of the kitchen where he had been standing and glaring at Dylan for the past twenty minutes.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Dylan protested. "I actually thought he liked me."

"No, you thought he was fit," Al replied. "And as we all know, your tolerance for attractive guys with personality flaws is two years, so thank Merlin Hugo revealed himself before it got to that point."

"At least Hugo wasn't addicted to anything," Dylan snapped.

"Weren't you just suggesting we fix that?" I asked.

They shot me a perfectly identical glare and I sank back into the shadows by the coffee pot.

"I was three years sober," Al almost shouted. "Three years, although Merlin knows why, since it clearly didn't do any good…"

"What do you mean it didn't do any good?" Dylan demanded. "You actually remember the past three years clearly, and didn't spend most of your mornings being sick in the toilet, and didn't wander through life in some weird hybrid state of both drunk and hungover at the same time!"

"And you still don't want me!" Al exclaimed.

"Seriously?" Dylan replied. "Is this actually what this is about?"

"Well what the fuck did you think it was about?" Al demanded.

"We'll just go…literally anywhere else," Rose said, pulling me out of the kitchen so we could leave them to yell at each other about their various unresolved issues.

"So that was deeply uncomfortable," I commented, taking a drink of my coffee and flopping onto one of the sofas in the lounge.

"Right?" Rose asked, siting sideways in an armchair with her ankles crossed. I noticed for the first time that she had a scarlet pygmy puff tattooed on her ankle. I grinned.

"I like your tattoo," I said.

She rolled her eyes and blushed slightly. "I figured that as the technical leader of our organisation, I should at least have our insignia."

"It looks nice," I agreed.

"You know that other criminals give us shit for having the least badass animal as our tag, right?" Will asked, joining us in the lounge with a piece of toast and some coffee. "And were Al and Dylan shouting incoherently at each other when you left?"

"No, they were still coherent when we were in there," Rose replied.

"Pygmy puffs are not the least badass animal," I said. "They have gladiator matches over crimes of honour and crimes of passion. Seriously though, the pink tribe got in a bitch fight over an arranged marriage with the turquoise ones who live in the basement and it got ugly."

Rose and Will stared at me with expressions that fell somewhere between confusion and pity.

"Is that what you do with your spare time instead of jacking off?" Will asked. "You watch pygmy puffs?"

"They're simultaneous events," Al shouted from the kitchen, apparently with enough situational awareness to continue his theory of me having a pygmy puff fetish.

"I do not!" I shouted back.

Will and Rose laughed at me and were interrupted by a tap on the window. I opened it and a large tawny owl flew in with a letter in its beak. It shook off the snow, took a drink of my coffee, and flew off. I closed the window again and opened the envelope. Exactly as predicted, it was a picture of Rachel. She was dressed in the sluttiest Mrs Clause costume you could imagine, was sucking on an oversized candy-cane, and had one hand on her belly. At that point, she was seven months pregnant. On the back of the picture, she had written "Merry Christmas" and kissed the paper. There was no return address still.

"I just…I don't even want the Sapphire back, or Rachel," I said. "But I'd really like to know my child at some point."

"Your fault for knocking up a wanted thief," Will replied airily.

"Fuck you," I said. "And hey, we're wanted criminals as well."

"Only you, and only by my father," Rose pointed out. "Who has absolutely no proof of any illicit activity."

I grumbled and went back to drinking my coffee.

January passed without incident. And then halfway through February, Sam stumbled into the kitchen very early in the morning with a cheery grin on his face that didn't belong to anyone sane at eight in the morning.

Rose and I watched him go through the motions of making himself breakfast – during which he accidentally scrambled the shells with his eggs, burnt his toast, and failed to put a filter in the coffee pot before he turned it on – until Dom waltzed into the room, grabbed one of the pieces of burnt toast, snogged Sam way too passionately for a normal morning kiss, and then ran off to practice.

Sam started humming to himself while he scraped his eggs onto a plate and only when he turned around did he notice Rose and me staring at him.

"Please don't eat those," Rose requested, nodding at his eggs. Rose and I belong to the group of people who only eat coffee for breakfast unless it's a special occasion, so it was unnerving enough to watch him go for food, let alone destroyed food.

"Dom and I are getting married," Sam announced, a huge grin splitting his face. "There are shells in my eggs aren't there?"

"Yep," Rose and I agreed, too in shock about their impending marriage to say anything else.

"Whoops," Sam said. "I didn't really get much sleep last night…"

"I should imagine," I agreed. "So Dom's the one who popped the question?"

"No!" Sam insisted, looking mildly offended. "I asked her."

"Right," Rose said slowly. "By accident, right?"

"No!" Sam insisted hotly. Then he stared down at his inedible eggs. "Maybe."

"One of those things that just sort of slips out when you don't mean it to?" I guessed.

"I even had a whole plan," Sam lamented whimsically. "I was going to put fairy lights in the garden and charm some of the flowers to bloom even though it's February and then I was going to make her dinner and…"

"And you accidentally popped the question, what, while you were brushing your teeth?" I asked.

"No!" Sam insisted.

Rose and I raised our eyebrows at him. It's funny, because Rose can only raise her left eyebrow and I can only raise my right and so when we were sitting next to each other, there was an omega made out of our eyebrows. Sorry, it's not actually funny, but I was at one point in my life a complete geek.

"It – it was in the shower," he mumbled.

Rose and I burst out laughing.

Everyone else thought it was just as funny as we did, except for Dom, who thought it was sort of sweet. It was exactly the sort of accident we would expect from Sam, who brightened considerably when Dom suggested he still put fairy lights in the garden and cook her dinner anyways. They had it all arranged for Valentine's Day, and being the creepy people we are without any form of social lives, the rest of us watched them from an upstairs window.

"They're so adorable," Em said, leaning against Will's chest in the window seat. Al and Dylan were still avoiding each other, as they had been doing since the Hugo accident. "Funny how they've been dating for less than two years and they're engaged."

"That's a pointed comment, isn't it?" Will asked.

"See, this is why I love you," Em replied. "Because you're smart."

"I knew I was forgetting something," Will said. "Let's see here on my checklist – make millions of galleons illegally, check. Play Quidditch professionally, check. Have smoking hot girlfriend, check. Live in a fantastic house with all of my friends, check. Erm… oh there it is. Marry aforementioned smoking hot girlfriend…"

Em pushed his shoulder playfully and shook her head. "You can't propose now, you'll steal Sam's thunder."

"And I suppose I'm to find a ring, right?" he asked.

"That would be nice," Em agreed.

"I think that was the most romantic proposal I've ever heard of in my entire life," Dylan said drily.

"Aren't they just supposed to be 'hey, I find you deeply attractive in every way and wish to spend the rest of time legally joined to you'?" I asked.

"With more sugar coating, yes," Rose agreed.

"That's good to know," I said.

Sam and Dom threw themselves into wedding planning wholeheartedly and Dom officially moved in. She had already been living with us, at least as long as we'd lived there and she'd done time with us in Knockturn Alley, but she never technically declared that she was moving in until after they were engaged. For her sake, we pretended that this was going to change something and then went back to everything being exactly the same way it had been for the past two years.

By March, it was completely expected to see them cooped up together at a table in the library sketching ideas for their wedding. Every so often, they would lean across the table and snog and then grin sappily at each other.

"It's nauseating, that's what it is," Al decided while we lurked in the door to the library to make sure Sam wasn't going to accidentally set fire to anything. It was a bad habit he'd picked up.

"You're just bitter and single," I informed him.

"So what does that make you?" he asked.

"Bitter and single," I replied. He laughed. I started to say something else, but there was a knock on the front door. No one ever turned up at our front door except for the occasional Muggle child on Halloween, who we always accommodated with these fabulous things called Mars bars that Dylan and Sam had introduced us to a few years back. But it was March.

We glanced at each other and then headed down the stairs to the front door just as Em opened it. We were standing on the other side of the door, so all we could see was Em's reaction. Her face went slack and her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged out. When her hand fell away from the door and it swung open fully, we saw exactly why.

Rachel had lost the weight very quickly, which shouldn't really surprise you, since that's just sort of how she is. She had a very stylish knit hat on over her much longer than I remembered hair and was wearing a fur-lined winter coat. In one hand, she had a roller suitcase in some fancy Muggle designer brand, but in the other she had a baby carrier.

"Sorry, I missed your birthday, didn't I?" she asked, brushing past the three of us into the house. "Yours too, Al. Twenty-one, right? That's what it said in Witch Weekly anyway."

I completely ignored everything she was saying and found myself on my knees next to the baby carrier she had set down. The baby was asleep, with a perfect little rosebud mouth curled downwards in a pout. She was wrapped in a pink blanket and had a matching pink knit hat pulled over her head. My hands were shaking when I brushed one of my fingers across her cheek. She fussed slightly in her sleep and tried to kick off the blanket.

"Don't wake her up, Scorpius, you have no idea how hard it is to get her to sleep in the first place," Rachel said, rolling her eyes while she took off her coat. I didn't even care that she was acting like she'd never been gone.

"Wh – what's her name?" I whispered, really unsure what to do with the deeply intense emotions coursing through my body that were informing me that literally nothing else mattered aside from keeping the tiny little girl – my little girl – safe and happy and cared for.

"Sorry, I just – I need a moment," I said, wiping the tears of my cheeks.

McFarlane nodded understandingly, looking slightly cut up about it as well.

"So what was her name?" he asked finally.

"Angelica," I said, taking a deep breath. "Rachel thought it was funny since it was because of the Seraphim Sapphire that she existed anyways."

But she had a job that she was supposed to be working and she wanted me to babysit.

"Of course," I said instantly. Rachel launched into a lecture on infant care and gave me a whole bag of the necessary effects and stepped into the Floo to meet up with her contacts. She had wasted no time in assuring us that the Seraphim Sapphire was hidden very far away from us and we would not be getting our hands on it. The only reason she'd come back was because she needed someone to watch Angelica and she trusted no one else to do it. She barely trusted me, but figured that since I was her father, I was the best candidate.

I spent the whole day sprawled out on a sheepskin rug in the den with Angelica next to me. Once she woke up, it became apparent she'd inherited Rachel's – and your – blue eyes but she had my hair. Her absolute favourite thing to do was hold onto my finger like it was a lifeline and then make gurgling noises.

Al and Em had failed to inform anyone else of the fact I was spending the day in the den with my daughter, and so it was kind of unsurprising that Rose yelped in shock when she walked in and discovered us. The noise made Angelica start and she burst out crying. I scooped her up and nestled her against my chest until she calmed down, realising as I did that I lacked the soft and squishy chest she was used to.

"Oh holy Merlin," Rose muttered, holding her heart and blinking at me in complete surprise. "Why is there a baby?"

"Her name is Angelica," I replied petulantly. "Because her mother is silly and if I had any say in it, she would have a much better name."

Rose let her hand fall from her chest and she instead knelt next to me on the floor. She brushed her fingers across Angelica's downy blonde curls and her face melted.

"She's beautiful," she said.

"And she's mine," I replied, relieved that she had calmed down and instead seemed to be falling asleep. "Because I'm not giving her back to her awful mummy who stole her away from me."

"I can't tell if you're talking to me or her," Rose said.

"I can't either," I replied. "But I'm not letting Rachel take her away again."

"Rachel was here?" Rose asked.

"No, the stork dropped her off," I retorted.

"Well, what was Rachel doing here?" Rose asked, giving me an annoyed look. "And she's asleep, Blondie, you can put her back down."

"No," I replied, continuing to cradle Angelica in my arms instead. "And Rachel's working a job and needed me to babysit."

Rose pursed her lips in a disapproving way.

"Oh come on," I said. "We get up to way worse than she does almost every single day."

"I know," Rose replied. "Which is what worries me."

"Why does that worry you?" I asked.

"Because neither of you are exactly fit parents," Rose pointed out.

"You don't understand," I said. "I would give up anything for her."

"I suppose that's a start," Rose replied, before she left me to my babysitting.

When Rachel returned from her meeting with her contact, she found the two of us unconscious on the rug. I only woke up when she kicked me lightly in the foot. My hand was protectively on Angelica's stomach and she was sucking on her thumb.

"Don't take her," I begged. "Please."

"Relax," Rachel said. "I'm going to be here for a bit. The job's more involved than I thought it was, so I can't just waltz in and steal the bloke's broom."

"You're stealing someone's broom?" I asked.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "I got hired as part of an on-going bitch fight between two long retired Quidditch players who spend their time getting weird revenge on each other. Do you mind if I stay here?"

"As long as you let me take care of Angelica, then no, I don't mind at all," I said. "I'll see about getting one of the spare rooms outfitted for human occupation."

"So you and Rose are dating?" Rachel asked, scooping up Angelica.

"No," I said. "Why?"

"Oh come on," she said. "I bore your child and you're going to make me sleep in a guest room?"

"I figured that when you left, that was sort of your announcement that you wanted nothing to do with me," I replied.

Rachel shrugged. "Well, for the time I'm here," she said. "You have no idea how hard it is to attract a man when you're pregnant."

"No because staying with the kid's father would be too much to ask," I grumbled.

"Oh come on," she said, walking up the stairs towards my room. "When was the last time you got laid?"

"Not in front of the baby," I said waspishly.

"Scorpius, she's a month old," Rachel replied. "She doesn't understand English."

"So?" I asked, slightly abashed.

"You don't get to be protective of her hearing for a few more months," Rachel said. "Then, by all means, go ahead. For now, I'm going to put a bassinette in the room adjacent to yours, get your transfiguration guru to put a door between the rooms, and then I'm going to shag you."

I decided I could live with that course of action and didn't even particularly mind when Rachel made me get up to soothe the crying baby at four in the morning. I did mind when she laughed at me when she discovered me asleep in an armchair in the adjacent room with Angelica curled up in my lap. Of course, Rose discovered us first and snapped a picture, and then woke up Rachel.

"Why are you laughing?" Rose asked. I think she figured I was still asleep. "That's one of the most adorable things I've ever seen."

Rachel's job took her two weeks, and then she started to get ready to leave, acting very much like she intended to take Angelica with her.

"No," I said. "No, she's my daughter too, and I want to keep her."

"I'm not just letting you take her," Rachel replied. "I'm her mother."

"You have a warrant for your arrest out," I pointed out.

"So I'll keep moving like I've been doing these past nine months," Rachel replied. "You're not taking my child."

"And you're not taking mine!" I exclaimed.

"What?" Rachel asked. "You want to take this to court or something?"

"I have more lawyers than you," I replied. "Also, you'd take one step into that court and they'd arrest you and then I'd get to keep her. So sure. Let's take this to court."

"I'd tell them she was someone else's," Rachel threatened.

"I'd have testing done," I countered.

"She can't grow up without a mother," Rachel insisted.

"Like you'd know," I snapped.

"Exactly," Rachel replied. "I know what it's like to grow up without one, and that's not going to be my daughter."

"But you can't take her," I said, holding Angelica closer. She was blinking at me with her big blue eyes.

Rachel sighed. Eventually we decided to draw up a sharing agreement. We would swap every two weeks unless one of us needed to go underground for some reason. We agreed unanimously that she would be kept away from all criminal activity for as long as possible. Considering what we both did for a living, it was altogether unlikely that she would get through her entire life without coming into at least contact with it, but we would protect her from it as long as we could.

Those were my favourite weeks. Rachel would drop her off on Friday morning and I would fail to go into work and instead stay home playing with Angelica. My utter control over my work schedule meant I could actually take the whole two weeks off, although Rose would get snippy with me if I did.

"It wouldn't be a big deal if I could get someone else to willingly threaten Daniel Ellison, but you're sort of it," she explained when she dragged me into her office at the house.

"I can't threaten Daniel Ellison," I said. "What if he gets an actually competent assassin to come after me? Then who would take care of Angelica? I can't risk things like that."

"Blondie, Daniel Ellison isn't going to suddenly change his paradigm. He doesn't even send proper assassins after you. He sends his bored security men who are under explicit instruction to not actually kill you," Rose replied. "We've corresponded on the matter."

"Yeah, but-" I protested.

She glared at me, and I accepted my defeat.

As the months wore on, I got to see her grow. Her bright blonde hair grew out into a fuzzy halo of ringlets and she tended to stare out at the world with frightful intelligence in her eyes.

"Oh look," Dylan said, walking into the kitchen with the day's paper while I stood there feeding Angelica applesauce. It was almost August. "Peter Cartwright announced that his foundation has almost successfully eradicated Muggle homelessness in the UK."

"Yes, we stole a priceless gem from a saint, I get it," I replied, turning back to Angelica, who was not a fan of the applesauce. "And it's a good thing we did," I told her. "Because otherwise I wouldn't have you."

There was no way she understood me, but she grinned at me anyways.

"You know, I always figured you'd get yourself whipped by some hot girl, not a six month old," Dylan said, laughing at me.

"Angelica is the prettiest girl I ever need in my life, thanks," I replied haughtily. Dylan just laughed and walked off.

He had been gone mere moments when Em walked into the kitchen and brushed a speck of applesauce off Angelica's cheek.

"How are you two doing?" she asked, leaning against the counter next to the high chair.

"We are not fond of applesauce," I replied. "But Mummy says it's what we're supposed to eat. How are you doing?"

Em shrugged. "Will hasn't bought me a ring yet and seems to think we're engaged anyways."

"I'm sorry," I replied. I turned back to Angelica. "Your Uncle Will is very silly."

"Also, I'm pregnant," Em added.

I dropped the applesauce spoon and Angelica laughed.

"Congratulations!" I exclaimed, hugging her.

"Thanks," she said, looking amused. "You know, a few months ago, that wouldn't have been cause for congratulations."

"No, but now you two won't look at me like I'm mad since you'll know what I'm talking about," I replied.

For her six month birthday, Rachel got her a locket with a picture of each of us in the panels. Angelica liked to gum at it when no one was looking, and so I never let her wear it when she was at my house, lest she swallow it on accident. I got her a stuffed pygmy puff that she refused to let go of whenever she was sleeping.

It was the week after my birthday when Rachel came to collect her.

"No don't," I protested. "Just one more week."

Rachel laughed at me. "You can't do this every time," she said.

"Yes I can," I replied. "Because before we know it, she's going to be starting Hogwarts and then we'll only get to see her at holidays and she'll grow up to be bitter and resentful of us because she'll be a teenager and every teenager resents their parents and-"

"We'll be back in two weeks," Rachel promised.

She wasn't.

Two weeks went by, and then three, and then a month, and then it was a week shy of Halloween. I spent the whole time scouring the planet for them, but absolutely no leads turned up. I even popped into your office, if you'll remember.

"You're the bloke looking for Rachel Tyler, aren't you?" I asked, pretending not to know you were her father.

"Why do you have any leads?" you asked, looking quite enthusiastic about the idea.

"Actually, I was hoping you did," I replied.

"Not for almost two years," you said.

And so I even asked Ellison. He had turned up the truth about Hugo's employment a week after we found out, so I figured he might know something about Rachel since he's rather prudent about keeping tabs on the people he wants dead. But he didn't know anything either.

"I'm sure it's just Rachel being Rachel," Rose comforted, rubbing my shoulders in a soothing way.

I knew I was going spare, and driving everyone else mad along with me. "But what if she's not?" I asked.

She wasn't.

On Halloween, there was a knock on the door and I answered it, assuming it was going to be a trick-or-treater. Rachel collapsed into my arms and clung to me desperately, sobbing uncontrollably. After a moment, I realised her clothes were torn and filthy, soaked with blood that I realised was Rachel's. She was covered in bruises and cuts and most of the fingers on her left hand were broken and dislocated. She was much too thin, and I could see her ribs through the holes in her shirt. And she hadn't stopped crying.

"Where is she?" I asked, unable to stop the panic in my voice. Rachel didn't stop crying. "Rachel, where is she?"

"They – they took her," she managed to choke out. Her voice was hoarse from the crying, and also, I realised later, from screaming.

"Who took her?" I demanded. "Tell me who took her so I can go get her back."

Rachel shook her head and kept sobbing. She's the only person I've ever seen truly broken. Mostly because I couldn't actually see myself the few months afterwards.

"They killed her," Rachel whispered, sinking to the floor because her legs couldn't take it anymore. "They killed her."

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