January 7th, 2012
A/N: This is chapter twenty four, oh my God. This story has made it so freaking far. I've never seen something through this long. I feel accomplished :D How would you guys like a Harmony fan fiction sometime? After I've finished this, of course, and gotten at least started on the sequel. Like, I'll write the sequel beforehand and then I can post chapters even while working on a different piece. Sound good? Let me know what you think (:
Thanks to Cat for being the best beta ever!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter Twenty Four
Narcissa managed to leave her hearing with the Ministry representatives without a sentence to Azkaban. They believed her when she told them she was put under the Imperius Curse – they gave her the benefit of the doubt since she helped bring Voldemort down for good in an indirect way. Narcissa was merely put under house arrest for a month, but mainly so Death Eaters wouldn't seize control of the Manor again.
As she was preparing to apparate back home, Narcissa spotted her son coming down the hall, conversing with Harry Potter. She waited until Draco saw her and greeted her to say anything.
"Hello, Mother," Draco said, figuring out why Narcissa was at the Ministry on his own. "How did your hearing go?"
"Hello, Draco. Hello, Mr. Potter," Narcissa replied. "The hearing went well. They understood my situation and chose to not sentence me to a stay in prison. Mr. Potter, I believe I can thank you for my credibility now."
Harry shook his head and smiled. "Mrs. Malfoy, I had nothing to do with it. It was all you."
Narcissa smiled back at Harry and hugged Draco. "Do come visit me soon, darling, and bring Miss Granger with you. I should really start getting to know my future daughter-in-law better."
"I'll try my best, Mother. Stay safe. If you need anything…let me know."
The Lady Malfoy assured her son that she would take him up on his offer if it was necessary, and twisted into the air with a crack.
Draco resumed his conversation with Harry. "Weasley took it pretty badly, then?"
"He had the gall to call you an arse when you got Hermione back on her feet after he cheated on her," Harry said, clearly still unhappy with Ron's poor choices. "He even said Hermione wasn't really a part of their family."
"But Mrs. Weasley thinks of Hermione as a daughter," Draco reminded Harry.
"Ron said Hermione technically wasn't part of the family."
"And you said?" Draco asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Well, saying Hermione isn't a part of the Weasley family is like saying I'm not, and I told Ron as much. Other than that the wedding was nice. He tolerates Lavender better now. I'd even say he's starting to truly care for her," Harry admitted. He talked to Draco much more, now that he was engaged to Hermione. Harry couldn't exactly talk to Ron about himself, and he didn't want to burden Hermione, as she had been his rock for ten years. Besides, Draco was a good listener and he offered unbiased opinions.
Draco shrugged. "It took him long enough. As poorly as I think of Brown, she deserves to be married to someone who loves her. Thanks for letting me know about the updates on Warrant and Umbridge. See you around, Potter." They parted ways, and Draco flooed back to his flat.
Hermione was waiting for him in the sitting room, looking extremely agitated.
"What's got your knickers in a twist?" Draco asked, shedding his robes and sending them to their room. "Didn't you have a pleasant day back at work? You were practically begging me to start working again."
"I'm just so tired of everyone treating me like a piece of glass!" Hermione exclaimed. "It's been a week since I came home and nothing has gone back to normal yet. Even you are being abnormally considerate! You actually asked me if I minded what television channel you watched while I read on the sofa the other day! This has to stop, Draco."
"Pardon me for worrying about your well-being!" Draco burst out. Being so unsure about what Hermione wanted had taken its toll on him. "I don't see what your problem is, the only reason we're acting differently is because we care!"
To Draco's surprise, Hermione smiled, ever so slightly. "That's more like it."
Draco glared at her. "Don't think I don't see what you did there, Granger." He sighed and sat down next to Hermione, drawing her to him. "Much as I hate to say it, you are right. It'd be better if everything went back to normal. We can't undo what happened, but we can get over it and move on."
"Excuse me, but I've already gotten over it and moved on. You lot are the ones taking such a long time," Hermione said matter-of-factly. Draco only chuckled and kissed the top of her head.
Crookshanks had gone absolutely mad when Hermione was gone. He adored his mistress and when he realized that her absence was not natural, he went ballistic. Draco had a hard time keeping Crookshanks calm, and could barely get the creature to eat, much less sleep.
Now that Hermione was back at the flat, Crookshanks never let her out of his sight, unless she was in the shower, dressing, or at work. Other than that, he followed Hermione everywhere.
Hermione didn't mind, but Draco did. Crookshanks insisted on sleeping in their room instead of the sitting room, where he was supposed to be at night. He would curl up on Hermione's feet, and Draco avoided doing anything the least bit risqué with Hermione while her pet was present. Draco had a feeling that Crookshanks would watch and disapprove, and eventually protest. He certainly wouldn't leave the room, the way a normal cat might.
On September twenty second, Draco lost it.
"Hermione, is there any way you can get that damn cat of yours to leave us alone for more than a few minutes?"
"What do you mean? Crookie isn't doing anything wrong," Hermione said, cradling 'Crookie' in her arms. "He stays out of the way and he keeps quiet. He just wants to make sure I'm alright."
"He hasn't done anything, exactly, but neither have we, which is my point. With your cat lingering around all the time, I can hardly touch you, lest he jump on me and start clawing out my eyes."
Hermione laughed and gently scratched Crookshanks's head. "Crookshanks wouldn't do that. He likes you. But if it bothers you that much, I'll see what I can do about it, okay?"
Draco knew that Hermione was hopeless when it came to seeing how much Crookshanks hated any human being who dared get close to Hermione romantically. Crookshanks was amicable with Harry, Fred, George, Percy, Ginny, and the rest of the crew, but not Draco or Ron, and Hermione wouldn't admit to herself how vile her beloved half-kneazle would become around those two.
Hermione did keep her word, though, and that night Crookshanks stayed in the sitting room as if it had been what he was intending to do all along.
Draco consented to getting his hair cut towards the end of the month. Hermione accidentally told him about how she once cut Harry's hair during the horcrux hunt, and Draco asked her to do the same for him.
"Honestly, you're just asking to be given a reason to hate me," Hermione said, rifling through her sewing kit for a pair of scissors. "Harry can tell you how horrible it turned out to be."
"Potter's hair is messed up anyways. The fact that you cut his hair once is hardly an excuse for that. Now hurry up, my mother's going to be here in twenty minutes."
"If you insist…" Hermione bit her lip and tried her best to make Draco's hair look the same way it had before, only shorter. She was satisfied with her progress and the result, but she wasn't certain Draco would be too.
"I was starting to think about sending an owl to a professional, with the way you were going on. It looks fine, Hermione," Draco said, cleaning up the floor with a wave of his wand.
"Liar," Hermione muttered, but then Narcissa stepped out of the fireplace and she could say no more on the matter.
"Darlings, hello, how are you?" Narcissa greeted them. Draco embraced his mother and Hermione shook the older witch's hand, murmuring an answer as she did so. She wasn't entirely at ease around Narcissa, but she was no longer on edge whenever they were in the same room either.
Draco and Narcissa exchanged a look, and a moment later Draco left Hermione with his mother while he fetched tea for the three of them.
"Hermione, I would like to offer my sincerest apologies for anything that happened to you while you were in Malfoy Manor," Narcissa said. "I am aware that you have assured me time and time again that I could have done nothing, but I disagree. I think I could have done something. I am as much in the wrong as those Death Eaters who took and kept you there, and I apologize."
Was this why Narcissa was there in the flat? Draco didn't specify on why the lady Malfoy was paying them a visit, and as far as Hermione knew the woman hadn't made a social call yet since they got engaged. Hermione did appreciate Narcissa reaching out, though, and expressed that by not arguing with her, because Merlin knows Malfoys hated to be argued with.
"I hardly think it was necessary, but I accept your apology. Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy," Hermione replied.
"I've started to address you by your given name, Hermione, so I expect you to do the same for me if you are not comfortable calling me Mother."
"Well, then, thank you, Narcissa," Hermione amended, mustering a smile despite how awkward she felt.
"I should take my leave now. I have business to attend to elsewhere. Thank you for inviting me over, Draco, and thank you, Hermione, for talking to me while my son pretended to be busy in the kitchen for the first time in his life. Goodbye." Narcissa disapparated, leaving a dumbstruck Hermione and a gaping Draco behind.
"That was…interesting," Hermione said faintly. Draco shook his head in disbelief.
"Merlin, I'm twenty one and she still finds ways to make me feel like I'm eleven," he said wonderingly.
"I think that's the thing about mothers, Draco: they never stop coming up with ways to embarrass their children."
"Perhaps my opinions will change when I have children I can humiliate."
Hermione chuckled and allowed Draco to pull her onto his lap once he had sat down next to her. "You will do no such thing," she said, resting her head against her fiancé's shoulder.
"Won't I?"
"You won't," Hermione finished, in a tone that suggested Draco would not escape easily should he choose to disobey that command.
Later, as they lay in bed in a tangle of limbs, Draco kissed Hermione's nose and teasingly called her his insufferable know-it-all. She responded by kissing his jaw and calling him her twitchy little ferret.
"Ron, you have to go to their wedding," Harry said, two months after Hermione's twenty second birthday had occurred. "Hermione's been a best friend to us both for years!"
"Harry, I've said this before. If they didn't bother coming to my wedding, why should I bother going to theirs?" Ron asked, arching an eyebrow. "Give me one good reason."
"Okay: you cheated on her and that's one of the reasons she's getting married to someone else," Harry replied readily. He had expected that Ron would resist the idea of attending Hermione and Draco's wedding. "If you'd like another one, I have plenty more."
"I might as well hear the rest," Ron said, but he sounded wary to Harry and George, who had stopped walking outside of his younger brother's old bedroom at the Burrow when he caught a snippet of the conversation.
"Secondly, Lavender wants to go," Harry continued. "And right now she is hormonal and ready with her wand. Thirdly, Hermione really wants to be friends again. I know you've gone to lunch what, once, and that you've talked on occasion, but that's more like you're putting an effort into staying acquaintances rather than friends. It would mean the world to her if you came."
"So I take it you've already decided you're going?"
"Well, yes, I mean, I sort of have to." Harry hesitated, but he'd have to tell Ron sooner or later. "Draco asked me to be one of his groomsmen and I accepted."
"You WHAT?"
"Ron, I don't need this right now. It isn't that big of a deal. You need to get over this, because I thought you had a long time ago, and it appears I was wrong. Mate, we talked about this at your wedding. Put it behind you." Harry turned and exited the room, giving George a knowing look on his way out.
George hovered in the hallway. He loved Hermione as a sister and disliked what Ron was doing to her, what Ron did to her, but it wasn't his place to intervene when Harry was taking care of it. Also, bringing it up again would only upset Ron more.
Well, George supposed he had to go in, if that was the case.
"How are you on this fine day, Ronniekins?" George asked, smiling serenely.
"I'm alright," Ron said slowly, most likely fearing a prank or something else that could potentially be harmful. "Why aren't you at the shop?"
"We have to take a holiday sometimes, don't we? You know Fred and me – we try not to divulge in too much chaos."
Ron snorted and sorted through a box of items Molly had given him. He held up the telescope that had given Hermione a black eye in the summer before their sixth year and set it aside. That early on, George couldn't tell if the telescope was going into Ron's 'keep' pile or not.
"As I was passing by – by mere coincidence, mind you -," Ron snorted again, "I overheard you and dear Wonder Boy discussing Hermione's wedding. What's your problem, then? Why don't you want to go?"
"You know who she's marrying! You can't say you approve, too. You hated Malfoy, and I reckon you still do," Ron said.
"Ah, but that's the thing, Ronnie my boy: I don't hate Malfoy. In fact, I told him, and Fred did too, that I'd be delighted to be one of his groomsmen."
Ron leapt to his feet. "Not you and Fred as well! Harry's already in Malfoy's stinking web of lies, but you two? What happened to hating Malfoy as much as we all hate Umbridge? They're about the same, if you think about it, both hating Muggle-borns and half-bloods as they do. Hermione would never be happy, married to a prejudiced pureblood like that!"
George stared at his brother. "Ron, you seem to have forgotten that, had you not cheated on her, Hermione most likely would have ended up married to you, and you, in your own way, are a prejudiced pureblood. A blood traitor in the eyes of other purebloods, certainly, but still a prejudiced pureblood," he said.
"I'm nothing like Malfoy!" Ron exclaimed.
"Did I say you were like him at all?" George asked, placing a hand on Ron's shoulder and forcing him to sit down. "No, I did not. I simply said that you are, in your own way, a prejudiced pureblood, and you can't disagree with that. It's fact."
No, Ron couldn't disagree with what George said. Prankster he might be, the man was still smart and alarmingly perceptive. George had suspicions about Ron he hadn't even shared with his twin, though he knew Fred thought only the same lines as him.
"I suppose I could go," Ron mumbled.
"Brilliant, my work here is done, see you on Sunday, little brother!" George said, walking away with a smug expression and an extra spring in his step.
Phase one was complete.
A/N: Goodness gracious, what on earth are those conniving, mischievous and lovable twins up to now? Only time will tell :) I have decided that Lavender's firstborn will be a girl, because that is what most of you opted for - I don't believe I got a single vote for a boy.
Also, the only pair resulting from the offspring of Lavender and Ron and Hermione and Draco will be Scorpius and Rose. They won't have an easy time getting about to a romantic relationship, of course, but they will get there, and nowhere else. I deter from pairing any more Malfoy children with a Potter or Weasley.
I also have the birthdays and such for the Granger-Malfoy children jotted down in a notebook. Here are the names with Hogwarts houses, in no particular order:
Katherine Nymphadora Malfoy - Gryffindor
Lila Jean Malfoy - Ravenclaw
Scorpius Remus Malfoy - Gryffindor
If you want, I'll share the names and houses of Lavender and Ron's children in the next chapter. Sorry this author's note went on for so long.
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