A/N: Big thanks to black_imperator from the HMS Harmony Discord server for beta-reading my fic and pointing out all of the typos/mistake I wrote in the story. English ain't my first language and some things just fly over my head from time to time. Black_Imperator helped me fix them so thank you to you!

CHAPTER 1: HARRY AND ROSE

At the border of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire existed the small village of Shipton's Lynn. The village of Shipton's Lynn was relatively new in England, having been founded in the eighteenth century.

Shipton's Lynn was home to a small family named the Potters. The Potters were a very secretive family and, as such, not much was known about them. Most of the residents of Shipton's Lynn only knew two members of the family: Harry Potter and his daughter Rose. So rare was it to see the Potters that some believed that the family simply didn't exist. After all, only Harry Potter was often seen by his neighbours. They had only seen his daughter Rose a few times and rumour was it that he had a wife, although nobody had seen her in in years. Some wondered why the Potters were so secretive. Some people believed that Harry Potter was a Scotland Yard agent living undercover.

They weren't that far off the mark.

While Harry wasn't an undercover agent for Scotland Yard, he was actually working for its magical equivalent: the Auror Office. You see, Harry Potter was a wizard, and his daughter Rose was a witch. The reason the neighbours barely saw the Potters was simply because they often used alternative methods of travel that didn't require leaving the house, such as the floo network or portkeys. The reason the neighbours saw Harry the most was because Harry would often apparate to the Ministry of Magic and would do so from a few corners away, enjoying a peaceful walk along the way. The reason Rose wasn't sighted often was because she would go to school or visit her friends via the Floo Network. Of course, the Potters had a backyard — like the other residents of their street — but, unlike them, Harry had warded it so that nobody could look inside without immediately forgetting whatever they had seen.

One of those days, Auror Harry Potter came back from work via apparition, smiling sadly at the various groups of costumed children walking around, shivering. It was an unusually cold day outside. Today was Halloween, October 31st 2006 and while muggles were out trick-or-treating, witches and wizards all around the country were celebrating Lord Voldemort's First Downfall. The Aurors always had more work to do on Halloween and Victory Day (2nd of May) as many witches or wizards willingly or unwillingly broke the law while celebrating the end of the two wars. Because of that, Harry had to miss Rose's first trick-or-treat, something he greatly regretted.

It wasn't the first time things didn't go the way Harry wanted on Halloween. October 31st had never been a happy day for Harry in his youth. Halloween 1981 had been the day his parents had been murdered and the day he had been made an orphan. It was the day he was brought to his only living relatives, the Dursleys. For the next nine Halloween, Harry was forced to stay locked-up in his cupboard alone while his Aunt and Uncle went trick-or-treating with his cousin Dudley. The worst Halloween of his early childhood had been in 1985, where Harry lost a friend. In 1991, in his first year at Hogwarts, Harry had ended-up fighting a troll to save someone's life.

In 1992, the Chamber of Secrets was opened again. In 1993, he had been forced to stay in the castle alone while all of his friends went to the nearby village of Hogsmeade and, that evening, mass-murderer Sirius Black destroyed the painting of the Fat Lady when he was refused access to Gryffindor Tower. That he later learned that his godfather wasn't a murderer and had come to Hogwarts to try to protect him didn't change the fact that it had been another bad Halloween for Harry.

In 1994, his name came out of the Goblet of Fire, starting nearly two long years of people trying to slander, smear and discredit him. First by his fellow students and classmates, second by the main newspaper of the country — the Daily Prophet — and third, by the Ministry of Magic itself. 1994 had been the last horrible Halloween that Harry had to go through as nothing major happened in the following ones, although it forever stayed a day of mourning for Harry.

Halloween 2000 had been his first good Halloween Harry could remember — and his best one to date. Unlike some of what the neighbours believed; Harry was indeed married. Before the birth of his daughter, his wife — Hermione Potter — was his life. To this day, he could still remember coming back from work on that Halloween to find Hermione crying. For a moment — and remembering exactly what day it was — Harry began to panic, wondering if something bad had happened once again on Halloween. It wasn't until he noticed the massive grin on his wife's face that he realized those were happy tears.

"What's the grin for?" he had asked, baffled.

"Harry... I'm pregnant!" she said, grinning.

"You're... really!?" he squeaked, barely believing something so good could have happened that day.

Hermione nodded, tears of joy slowly falling down her cheeks. Harry took her in her arms and lifted her off the ground, laughing. His wife shrieked in surprise before she laughed as well. For the first time since 1981, Harry had a happy Halloween. For the first time since he was a toddler, he celebrated. Halloween had become a good day for Harry.

Today was Rose Hermione Potter's first-time trick-or-treating. Harry had hoped to be there for his daughter's first time but work had kept him away. If he was honest with himself, he was regretting becoming an Auror. It had been an easy decision at first, thanks to the lack of stability of the Ministry and general unrest following the end of the war but, the more he worked, the more he missed time with his only daughter and the more it made both of them sad.

Finally, today, Harry had come to the decision to quit the Auror Office and to begin looking for a new job. He had recently learned that the current Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Professor Remus Lupin — Rose's godfather and Harry's good friend — was planning to retire at the end of the current school year. Harry was interested in teaching and he knew that neither Remus nor Headmistress McGonagall would mind having him take over the class so Harry made plans to apply for the job.

Harry walked up the stairs in the Potter Cottage in the village of Shipton's Lynn. He had learned that he had inherited the small, cosy house from his paternal grandparents after his fifth year at Hogwarts. He and Hermione had moved there shortly after the end of the Second Wizarding War. Coming upstairs, Harry heard a flurry of activity and giggling from one of the rooms. Rose's room. Leaning on the door-frame, Harry smiled at his giggling daughter who was preparing herself for bed. Harry remembered how surprised he had been when he had first seen her — the day his life had changed.

It seemed that both she and he had followed the rule of looking a lot like one of their parents but with their other parents' eyes. With her brown, bushy hair and bright green eyes, Rose looked like a younger version of her mother. Apart from the colour of her eyes, Rose had inherited two major things from Harry. The first one was his vision. To Harry's horror and disappointment, her teacher at school had told him just a month ago that Rose didn't appear to be able to read what was written on the board in the classroom. She had realized that Rose's vision was turning out to be just as bad as Harry's and had notified him. A few days later, Rose was the proud owner of a brand-new pair of glasses. She had taken a round, wired frame to be just like her father.

The second thing Rose seemed to have inherited from Harry was the majority of his personality — something Harry didn't know if it should make him proud or terrify him. Oh, Rose was also like her mother in many ways but she was much closer to Harry than her mother. Rose's godmother — Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin — had told him that he should be proud but Harry had reservations. He didn't know if his heart would be able to take it if Rose got in as much trouble as he himself did when he was attending Hogwarts. When he had brought that up to Rose's godfather, Remus had simply laughed and called it the Marauder gene.

Rose didn't take long to notice her father standing in the doorway. "Daddy!" she cried happily before Rose ran toward him.

"Hey sweetie!" said Harry, kneeling down just in time to catch her in his arms.

"Daddy!" she repeated, hugging her father. "I went trick-or-treating at school!"

"Really!?" said Harry, feigning his surprise. Since it was impossible for Rose to be home-schooled, Harry had sent his daughter to Hermione Potter's Academy of Magic, a wixen primary school that his wife had founded a few months before she became pregnant with Rose. Hermione's idea was to have a magical primary school where magical children could attend since, at the time, fathers and mothers were still working overtime with the Ministry helping on the reconstruction of the British Wizarding World. With few parents available to home-school their children full time, Hermione had come with the idea to have a magical primary school. The school also invited muggleborns in the hope that those raised from non-magical families would have years to learn about the wizarding world before sending them to Hogwarts and not months like before. The idea had been revolutionary and changed society. It also helped reduce discrimination toward muggleborns as they couldn't be accused of being ignorant about the magical world anymore. The school had been named in Hermione's honour following it's opening in 2002.

"Did you have fun?" asked Harry. Both Harry and Rose had been disappointed that they hadn't been able to go treat-or-trick together. It was one of the reasons why he wanted to leave the Aurors. Missing important milestones in his daughter's life always made him feel horrible. Rose crying when he had said that he wouldn't be there had just fuelled the fire.

"Yes!" exclaimed Rose loudly. "Professor Lovegood went with Laura, Persephone, Josh and I! We got a lot of sweets and chocolate!"

"You didn't eat them yet, did you?" he asked suspiciously. Rose was almost bouncing in his arms.

"No!" said Rose, sounding very guilty.

Harry had to do his best not to laugh. She was as bad of a liar as her mother. "Rose, I thought we agreed that you wouldn't eat your sweets until I was there."

"I'm sorry!" squeaked the five-year-old as tears started to leak out of her eyes.

Harry sighed. He didn't like seeing Rose cry. It always made him feel bad. It made him feel like he was a failure as a father even if, logically, he knew it was far from the truth. The fact that he felt horrible just because he had reminded her that she shouldn't have eaten sweets while he was away made him realise just how wrapped around her little finger he was. Rose was very much a daddy's girl. While she had her father wrapped, Rose's dream was also to make her father proud. Rose always hated when her father was disappointed in her which was reason why she had started crying.

"Alright," he said, taking his daughter in her arms again. Rose snuggled in his embrace. "Since it's Halloween, I'm going to ignore it." he continued, kissing the top of her head. "Now, what do we say when Daddy let you ignore the rules once?"

Rose giggled. Her muffled "Thanks!" came from his chest where Rose was snuggled.

Harry smiled and kissed her again. "Now, why don't you go to bed? It's starting to get late."

"Okay, Daddy!" said Rose before she left his embrace and ran toward her bed. Rose climbed in her bed before putting her glasses on her night stand and covering herself with her blankets. Harry approached her bed and gave her one last kiss, this time on her small forehead. "Sleep well, sweetie." he smiled before he slowly walked toward the door. He shut down the lights, leaving only a small candle lit. He was about to close the door when he heard his daughter speak.

"Daddy, can you tell me a story?"

Harry turned around and smiled. Rose was giving him puppy-eyes and Harry couldn't resist them. Understanding she probably wouldn't fall asleep anytime soon thanks to the sweets, he sighed lovingly.

"Of course. What story do you want to hear?" he asked. Usually, Rose always wanted to be told about the fantastical things that happened to him during his Hogwarts years — such as his fight with a 'giant evil snake' or him flying against a 'big, dangerous dragon'. Of course, he always told watered-down versions of these tales to his five-year-old daughter but he had made sure to never lie either. Those stories had always satisfied Rose which was why he was surprised when she asked about him and her mother.

"I want to hear about how you and Mummy met!"

Harry blinked. "Really?" he said. Rose nodded. "Okay, then." said Harry as he grabbed the chair in the corner of the room and placed it at her bedside, as he always did when he was telling her a story. Before he began telling the tale, Harry decided to first warn his daughter. "First, you need to understand that not all of the story of Hermione and I could be called 'happy'. A lot of sad things happened between the first time we met until you were born. Are you sure you want to know it?"

"Yes." answered Rose with a nod.

Harry let out a small sigh. So it began. "Well, I guess I better start at the beginning. In the year 1984, a small boy named Harry Potter..."