"We're really doing this aren't we?" He whispered into her hair, "We're planning our future, our family's future"
"We really are." She kissed him back softly. "You're sure you have no regrets?"
Looking over her shoulder at the children playing together in the living room, he smiled into her hair.
"None whatsoever"
oOo
The next couple of weeks had been exhausting, both mentally and physically. As they soldiered their way through Draco's funeral and the extensive research, leg work and spellcasting that was involved with breaking and resetting the wards on the prince properties and prince vaults.
Hermione had literally passed out at Gringotts when they finally got into the Prince vaults, Severus had to physically grab her to stop her sagging from the floor. She'd claimed an overall queasiness and exhaustion born of the stress of the past week, though Severus wasn't entirely certain it wasn't a girlish swoon that she refused to admit to, after seeing the contents of the Prince vault. After all, he'd had to have a moment to take it all in himself.
It wasn't the first time she'd been light headed though, Severus had to admit, as ever the Gryffindor she'd charged headfirst into being a caretaker for two children, the new matriarch of an old and important wizarding family line and all the while at home she was still working on private arithmancy projects of her own, as well as acting as an outsourced consult to a number of her colleagues in the Ministry who still contacted her by owl over certain cases in the magical creatures department. Not that she realised Severus knew about those last two, as she'd been convinced he hadn't noticed her stealthy scribblings.
But in typical Hermione fashion she'd grabbed the bull by the horns as the diminutive witch had been confident she could do everything herself, even though she often seemed to forget that she too needed both food and sleep. A fact that Severus had been reminded of more than once when he'd awoken to her helping herself to a sneaky midnight snack with an abashed look on her face that always made him chuckle in wry amusement.
So fortunately it didn't take much convincing to assign her the roll of inventory taker, and force her to remain seated as Severus took stock of the small number of artefacts in the fact that she'd been lamenting her footwear choice that day and the amount of walking that had taken place, had also no doubt played a part in her willingness to accept a roll that confined her to a chair. Albeit a rather comfy and costly one from the vault, though looking at her choice of footwear Severus wasn't surprised in the least, wondering just how in Merlin's blazes she'd ever managed to walk in the damn things in the first place.
They had both expected there to be more artefacts than galleons, though were pleasantly surprised (once the shock had worn off) to find out that was not the case. There was also a lot more galleons than expected, on the highest end of the Goblin's estimate. The Goblin actually informed them that they were only a few thousand galleons short of triggering the next level of Wards. As it turned out Augustus Prince, who'd been Severus's maternal Grandfather, had something of a gambling problem when it came to quidditch. He'd been both proud and boastful, but also rather fond of firewhiskey and the combination of the three had led to him liquidating the majority of artefacts in the vault to make more easily accessible galleons to cover his bets and subsequent debts... The vault itself had almost doubled in size after he'd risked it all figuratively with an insanely large amount of galleons on a quidditch world cup match, and he'd actually won, almost bankrupting the Selwyn family who'd bet against him. It wasn't much longer after that he'd passed on, so the vault upon his death was actually a lot fuller than it had ever been in his life due to his continuous whittling away at the family money. Ot was the one thing Severus could at least thank him for.
The most pleasant surprise had been finding a deed to a long forgotten property hidden away in an old journal. It seems there was a small cottage in the Highlands that had been bought as a "widow's cottage" many years since, though upon reading some of the journal it was found in, it turned out it had actually been bought to house the muggle mistress of one of one the rather famous Prince witches. It had been very hush hush so as not to expose the married witch's dalliance with both another woman and a muggle one at that, and since her passing many years since it had been forgotten about, no doubt the very modest building by the Prince's standards being of little care or consequence to a family as large and boastful they were, seeing as the Prince Manor itself was or indeed had been, every bit as Lavish as the Malfoy one, if not more so.
Thankfully now Arthur had allowed himself to go full Silver Fox as Hermione kept jokingly addressing him, and George turned up with different hair colour every time thanks to his laughing Locks Lozengers, Rose had been content enough to stay at Spinner's end with Scorpius under the loving care of her Grandfather or Uncle for a few hours. So whereas Hermione and Severus had made their way through the rest of the properties on their own, apart from enlisting Bill Weasley for a short stint at breaking some nasty curses on the Prince Manor itself, they had decided to take the children with the to the property in the Highlands, after a goblin had assured them it wasn't warded or cursed like the Princes were want to do with their other properties
Surrounded by forest and not far from a babbling brook, the once picturesque cottage was certainly overrun. Weeds, plants and nature in general claiming back the empty property that had sat vacant for almost a hundred years at this point.
With a barely contained swear, Severus had to lurch forward and quickly grab Scorpius like a quaffle, much to the boy's amusement, as when picking wild "flowers" for Rose, he'd almost pulled up what appeared to be from the leaves a fully mature mandrake. Hermione had cringed and cast a standard mother's ward that warned her if her wandering children were close to a potentially dangerous plant or beast. Scorpius wasn't the least bit phased by being hefted like a quaffle under a swearing Severus's arm and in fact found the whole thing exceedingly amusing and had caused him to let out a peel of unrestrained laughter, before struggling free to present Rose with the bouquet of "flowers" he'd picked...which were mostly weeds. Rose had smiled shyly though, then let him hold her hand which made Scorpius grin like he'd won the lottery.
Thankfully though overgrown, the cottage had been blood warded by the witch at least, whereas at the time it had been done for protection and comfort of the Witch's mistress, the result had been that the bones of the property were both solid and safe whilever the Prince line survived. Even if it would take some work to reclaim it from nature and modernise it, the house itself was not at risk of falling down around them and was in fact intact down to all the original stonework and windows.
When they took the children to the cottage with them, the idea had been simply to get them out of the house. The property had no dangerous hexes, curses or wards they'd been assured by the Goblin and Hermione trusted them implicitly. Seeing how besotted the Goblins were with her, thanks to how tenaciously she'd fought for and won their rights, and the subsequent way they bent over backwards to help her and by extension him, Severus too had no qualms in trusting the Goblin's word that the property was not dangerous. As Rose had been very sheltered and so had Scorpius in a sense too, they had both agreed they needed to come out and see the world more and more, instead of just being moved from house to house and doing inventory on the cottage would be a good way to get them out and about while still retaining their privacy, and not overwhelming them with a crowd of people.
It was clear to Severus though, the moment they'd set eyes on it, his witches loved the little cottage in the woods and Scorpius, being the boy that he was, was just happy when everyone around him was happy. And well, when Rose was happy… Scorpius was ecstatic.
After carefully using magic to clear out a path in a number of large brambles in the front garden, and apologetically relocating a hedgehog they'd unearthed, after allowing the children to meet the prickly fellow, they came across an old manual lawn mower tangled in the weeds. Severus was about to banish it until he realised Scorpius was fascinated with the muggle contraption and wouldn't rest until he'd 'mowed the lawn like a muggle' with Severus… who hadn't got the heart to tell him that the manual mower was obsolete even by muggle standards and muggles had been using petrol and electric mowers for a few decades before he was born. So before they'd even made their way into the cottage, and after a quick check to make sure there were no other wildlife taking shelter in the long grass, Severus found himself pushing along the manual mower with a happy Scorpius 'helping'.
Hermione had looked on in amusement and jokingly summoned over her 'strapping young men' to the picnic blanket she'd put down after they'd both 'worked up a sweat' and the food that she and Rose had spread across it. Hermione had suggested bringing a picnic as toddlers were bottomless pits and Hermione herself could put away more than Severus thought a witch of her size would be capable of. Sitting down with Scorpius he watched fondly as the boy sat by Rose's side and picked up her hand with one of his , and then took a sandwich in the other. Rose smiled to herself as she got her own sandwich and Hermione leant into his side as she offered him the lemonade that had been kept under a cooling charm and he wrapped his arm around her, tucking her into his side.
There was no bustling city noise that he'd become accustomed to in his youth at Spinner's end, the sound of industry, cars, tools, dogs and reckless youths. Nor was there the constant noise of students that surrounded Hogwarts at all hours. But it was by no means quiet. The babbling brook was a constant background to the sound of singing birds and the occasional shuffle of beasts, both magical and not. Both Scorpius and Rose had exclaimed in delight at the sight of a deer that had wandered close to the gardens of the cottage looking at its inhabitants curiously. There were no muggles for miles, and the cottage had been empty for years so the deer had no inherent fear of the humans in the garden and instead approached curiously, close enough even for the children to offer it slices of apples which it took out of their hands gently and made both of them giggle in pleasure until the deer had bounded away, as the toddlers waved to it a goodbye.
Sitting himself back on the blanket , he inhaled deeply and took in the scents of the rich, fertile and loamy earth around him and all the plants and flowers that were children having eaten were exploring the different plants and flowers, before gleefully chasing butterflies. As proven by the vast growth around him, It was perfect ground for growing potion's ingredients, the ground was fertile and rich and close enough to a ley line that even magical plants would thrive.
He chanced a look at Hermione, who was staring wistfully at one of the windows. Looking up, he realised it was an old fashioned reading niche. The window had a deep cushioned sill, large enough for an adult or two to sit comfortably, and the edge of a bookcase could clearly be seen through the window. It was clearly a library.
When Hermione turned back to him she was biting her lip and looking at him doe eyed, and he arched an eyebrow at her and sighed overdramatically. "I guess, we're not selling it are we?"
The only answer he had was an overly emotional and tearful witch throwing herself into his arms, which made him chuckle, but soon turned into full blown laughter when he was pounced upon by two toddlers also.
"Alright alright... Get off me you little reprobates!"
They all giggled at him until Rose, louder than anyone had heard her speak, had exclaimed "Everyone tickle daddy!" which they had all proceeded to do until his deep laughter echoed through the surrounding forest.
oOo
It seemed that everything was falling into place, as they had a cup of tea before bed that evening. She was munching on a peanut butter sandwich, when he came over and stole a kiss. "That is for the children" he jokingly told her, as he pecked her lips affectionately and stole a bite from her sandwich. "Haha" She laughed sarcastically and snuck another kiss as he rinsed their cups in the sink. "Besides, I thought you hated peanut butter?"
Though he was left wondering what he'd said or done when she gave him a stricken look, abandoning what was left of the sandwich and heading up to bed alone.
She was in the bathroom when he got upstairs, and she'd even locked the door. Worried now he'd put his foot in it, he apologised through the door but when he heard her sniffling he'd quickly cast alohomora and slipped into the bathroom with her.
Shutting and warding the door behind him, he dropped to his knees before her, where she sat perched on the edge of the toilet seat.
"I'm sorry" He whispered. "I was only joking about the peanut butter, you know you can eat what you want"
"It's not about the stupid peanut butter" She choked out. "Well...it is about the peanut butter but it's not what you think it is about the peanut butter"
Confused, he cupped her face so she'd look at him.
"Hermione, I don't give a fuck about some damn peanut butter but I do want to know why it's making my lioness cry?"
Choking out a laugh she cupped his hand with hers.
"But that's the point Severus… this is about the peanut butter, you're right I don't like peanut butter"
Confusion laced his tone. "Then why-"
"Severus, I'm pregnant"