With The Daily Prophet going to print later than normal, the day's papers hadn't arrived by the time Draco headed off to work. Not that Hermione was bothered as her focus was on watching Scorpius play. After Draco had left, their son decided he was going to stage a dragon contest with his toy dragons, and Hermione watched in amusement as he set everything up so perfectly. After constructing an arena with his Lego blocks, he lined up his interactive dragons at one side, before placing several quidditch figures at the other side to act as judges. It took him almost an hour to get set up and Hermione knew that a lot of other children would have gotten bored by that stage and given up on their initial idea. But she knew that like she'd been as a child, half of the fun for Scorpius was the organising of the game.
"We're ready," Scorpius announced, finding a spiderman figure to act as the contest host.
Hermione watched in amusement as spiderman introduced the first dragon and Scorpius released the first dragon from it's cage. The dragons Scorpius were playing with were a new set of dragons he'd recently gotten from Lucius, and when they were released from the cages they stood in they flew, roared and even did tricks before returning to their perch. After the first dragon finished performing, Scorpius took it in turns to have his judging panel give their verdict and rate the dragon's performance.
The third of Scorpius's dragons was doing tricks when there was a tapping on the window and the post owl arrived with the day's edition of The Daily Prophet. Taking the paper from the owl and sorting out the payment, Hermione settled down to check out the response to the previous day's press conference while her son finished his dragon contest.
The front page contained a large picture of her, Draco, Harry and Daphne from the previous day along with the headline – The Truth. Inside the paper was an editorial from the Editor-In-Chief, where he made it clear that the shoddy reporting that had been present the previous day would no longer be part of the paper. There was then several different articles stemming from the previous day's press conference.
There was a large piece about her romance with Draco, and Harry's romance with Daphne. There was also a piece about Draco and Harry's business partnership, and a small piece about the break-in and the appeal Harry had made. All in all the stories leading from the press conference took up several pages of the Prophet, and Hermione strongly suspected the press attention wasn't going to stop there. For the next few days, her family and Harry's was going to be the centre of attention.
As she took in the extent of the coverage, she couldn't help but think that Lavender had missed a trick. By being so eager to publish a major scandal, she'd missed out on the chance of reporting genuine news. Like it or not, Hermione knew her love life was of interest to the press, as was Harry's. And of course Draco was also a person the press was interested in. So her relationship with Draco, Harry's with Daphne and the business partnership between the two wizards was always going to make headlines, and if Lavender had done her job properly, she should have been the one to break the news. But all she'd done was wreck her career. Or at least Hermione was assuming that was what happened, as she'd noticed that there was not one article written by Lavender in the paper.
Putting the paper down, Hermione turned her attention back to her son, who was declaring his Hungarian Horntail the winner of his contest. As she watched Scorpius, Hermione couldn't help but wonder how the press attention was going to affect him. So far they'd been able to shield Scorpius from the attention their return home had garnered, but Hermione knew that wouldn't last forever. She couldn't keep her son cooped up either at home or the manor. Sooner or later, he was going to have to venture into the wider wizarding world. She just hoped that whatever threats Lucius had made to the Prophet's editor would keep her son from being targeted by the press.
Not wanting to worry about what the future held for Scorpius, Hermione suggested her son might want to play outside for a while. Leaving the dragons where they were, in case Scorpius wanted to hold another tournament, Hermione took Scorpius outside and the pair spent the rest of the morning playing in the sun. They even had a little picnic lunch, before returning to the house, where Scorpius restarted his dragon contest, and even got Hermione to join him.
By the time Draco returned home from work, Scorpius had packed his dragons away and was sitting reading to Hermione.
"Someone is getting good with their reading," Draco remarked, ruffling Scorpius's blond hair.
"Do you want to hear a story?" Scorpius eagerly asked his father.
"I'd love that," Draco said, smiling fondly at his son.
While Scorpius was reading to Draco, Hermione headed off to get dinner sorted. With dinner cooking, Hermione returned to the living room and when Scorpius decided to play with some quidditch figures, she settled down next to Draco and checked if he'd seen the day's papers.
"Yeah, Harry and I grabbed a look over lunch," Draco replied with a nod. "I have to say, it was all pretty positive."
"Given the fact your father threatened the editor, I would be more surprised if the response hadn't been positive," Hermione chuckled. "I just hope he keeps his promise regarding Scorpius. I don't want our son splashed all over the papers."
"Nothing will appear in the papers about Scorpius," Draco assured his wife.
"Do you know if the appeal about the break-in had any effect?" Hermione asked, feeling better about Scorpius after Draco's reassurances.
"Harry spoke to Kingsley this afternoon and they've had a few people contact them," Draco answered. "But he said they'd have to be check everything out before we even think about handing over a reward. With any luck, someone will provide some useful information."
"Let's hope so," Hermione said as the couple left the topic of the press to one side as they settled down for a quiet family evening with their son.
00000
Heading into the restaurant, where she was due to meet her husband and best friends for lunch, Hermione ignored the lurking reporters who snapped her picture. She knew Lucius wouldn't allow anything negative to be published about the family, and quite honestly it made no difference to her if she was pictured having lunch with three of the most important people in her life. Today was a day for celebration, and she didn't care who knew it.
Not only were they celebrating her first week at St Mungo's, where she was working part-time as the paediatric healer, but Harry and Daphne had just discovered the baby they were expecting was a boy, and there had been an arrest following the break-in at the warehouse. With the promise of a reward, a young witch had come forward and admitted she had doubts about her boyfriend, now ex, who had worked for the company who owned the warehouse. It had been his job to clean the warehouses in between rentals, and when he'd been sacked for his lax attitude to his work he had vowed his revenge. His revenge had been the break-in, and when interviewed by the M.L.E officers who had taken over the case from Ron, he had confessed everything and had been able to give details of where he'd sold the stolen items. So with a good result looming, it had been decided that a celebration was in order.
"Sorry I'm late," Hermione apologised, greeting her husband, Harry and Daphne with kisses and hugs as she settled down at the empty space at the table. "I got talking with Padma and we lost track of time."
"Padma?" Harry questioned. "Padma Patil?"
"Do you know another Padma?" Hermione chuckled.
"Not really," Harry admitted. "I just didn't know you were still in touch with her."
"I'm not," Hermione replied. "But you know I was talking about that pre-Hogwarts school for Scorpius? It turns out Padma was the brains behind it."
The school Hermione was talking about was a new thing in the wizarding world, and it aimed to help children cope with the pressures of Hogwarts. Depending on the child's age, the school provided lessons on reading, writing and other basic skills they would need once they got to Hogwarts. But it also gave the children a chance to interact with other people their age. The aim was to make attending Hogwarts less of a stressful time, both for parents and children, and it was also hoped that it would improve house unity at Hogwarts as hopefully some children would have known each other before school and would remain friends even if they were sorted into different houses. Although for Hermione, the importance of the school was to help educate Scorpius and to get him mixing with other children. If she hadn't wanted to go back to work, she could have educated him at home, but she'd wanted a life outside of the family home and she knew it would benefit Scorpius to be away from her for a few days a week.
"Did you get Scorpius a place?" Draco asked.
"I did," Hermione confirmed. "But Padma was saying it's becoming increasingly popular, and until they're able to expand the premises and hire more staff, they might have to start limiting intake. She was talking about setting up waiting lists, so people can sign their children up as soon as possible."
"Maybe we should talk to her about the little one," Harry suggested to Daphne.
"Shouldn't we wait until he's born?" Daphne chuckled.
"I wouldn't," Hermione advised. "Harry's right, you need to be quick with these things. It certainly wouldn't hurt to talk to Padma. And if Pansy was thinking about doing the same with her children, she also needs to look into it. In a couple of years, this is going to really take off and you're going to need to be quick to get a new child signed up."
"Maybe we better pre-register the next one," Draco joked.
"You're not pregnant, are you?" Daphne gasped, eyeing up the glass of wine Draco had ordered for his wife when they'd arrived.
"No," Hermione replied with a shake of her head. "But we have been talking about expanding the family."
"That's great," Harry grinned, well aware that Hermione and Draco had always wanted more than one child. "It seems that everything is going our way. I say we have a toast. To us."
"To us," everyone chorused, clinking their glasses together.
"That's right, celebrate ruining my life," an angry voice slurred from nearby.
At the voice, everyone turned and spotted Ron weaving his way towards them. He'd clearly been sitting at a nearby table, although no-one had seen him. Following behind him was an older and more mature looking Ginny, who at the moment was looking embarrassed by her brother's behaviour.
"Ron, stop this," she hissed, catching up with Ron and grabbing hold of his arm.
"No, they need to hear this," Ron spat, pulling out of Ginny's grasp. "They need to hear how they ruined everything."
"Let him speak," Draco said, intrigued as to what exactly Ron was going to say to them.
He knew for a fact that earlier that day, Ron had been scheduled to have his disciplinary hearing as both he and Harry had been to the Ministry earlier in the week to give their statements and speak to the panel who would have decided Ron's future. Kingsley had seemed sure that Ron would survive, but given his behaviour and the fact he was clearly drunk so early in the afternoon, he was beginning to think that the hearing had gone badly.
"Oh, how nice of you to allow me to say my piece," Ron muttered sarcastically. "I don't need your permission to speak, Malfoy. I don't need your permission to do anything."
"Just say what you want to Ron," Hermione snapped. "We want to get on with our lunch."
"More like gloating over what you cost Lavender and me," Ron sneered. "Although, I should expect it from you, Hermione. You've really shown your true colours marrying Malfoy. He's pure evil, and you must be blind to not see that."
"I know exactly what sort of man Draco is," Hermione said calmly. "And it is not your place to judge my life choices. You walked away Ron, and ended our friendship. So I really don't give a toss what you think of my marriage."
"We all know why we're not friends any more," Ron snorted.
"Not this again," Harry groaned. "Hermione and I didn't do anything, and quite honestly if you can't see that after all this time, then that's your problem."
"Ron, we've spoken about this," Ginny said quietly. "I can see we were wrong, why can't you?"
Ron snorted in response to his sister, but Harry and Hermione exchanged shocked looks. At the time Ginny had been just as accusatory as Ron, and like her hot-headed brother, she'd been unwilling to listen to reason. However, it seemed like time had shown her the error of her ways, or at the very least enabled her to admit they had made a mistake.
"I mean that," Ginny said, addressing Harry and Hermione. "I'm just sorry it took me so long to realise it. But I want you to know that I know the part I played in your departure, and I'm very sorry for it. I really should have been braver and tried to contact you to apologise, but I was ashamed of my behaviour. But I am glad that you're both happy and everything worked out for you both."
"Thank you, Ginny," Harry said, smiling at his ex-girlfriend. "I hope everything turned out okay for you as well."
"It did, after I'd grown up," Ginny admitted with a chuckle.
"For Merlin's sake, stop being so nice to them, Ginny," Ron snapped angrily. "They've ruined everything. Lavender's lost her job and I've been demoted. If I'm lucky, I might one day make it back to a senior investigator, but that's it. I will never progress further than I have now."
"We didn't do that Ron, you did," Harry said with a sad sigh. "You behaved in an inappropriate manner and you abused your power as a Ministry employee. We had every right to complain about you."
"And as for your wife, she got what was coming to her," Draco snorted. "And it didn't have to be that way, Weasley. She had the perfect story fall into her lap, but rather than check her facts, she went for scandal and ruined her own career. She could, and should have, reported the truth, and she would have been lauded for her scoop. She could have been the one to reveal Hermione and I are married. She could have revealed the identity of Harry's wife. She could have told the world about my partnership with Harry. She could have been the talk of the press, for all the right reasons. And all she, or you for that mater, had to do was do your jobs properly and check your facts. So if you want someone to blame for your woes, Weasley, either look at your wife or look in the mirror. But do not look in our direction as we have done nothing."
The longer Draco was talking, the redder Ron's face was turning, and no sooner had Draco finished his speech than Ron turned and without another word, stormed from the restaurant. Looking totally embarrassed by Ron's behaviour, Ginny offered her apologies before going after her irate brother.
"Well that wasn't very nice," Daphne remarked with a frown.
"No, it wasn't," Harry agreed. "But let's not give Ron the pleasure of ruining our celebration. Let's forget about him and get on with our lives. As I said earlier, everything is going our way, so we should be thrilled."
"Harry's right," Draco remarked with a firm nod. "I vote that from now on, we ban all talk of Weasley and his wife. I can think of plenty of things we can talk about."
With everyone in agreement, Ron was forgotten about and the celebrations continued. The Malfoys and Potters had lots to look forward to, and they weren't going to let Ron ruin things. He and Lavender had already tried to make them look bad, but all they'd done was show themselves up and ruin their own lives. They hadn't touched Hermione, Draco, Harry and Daphne, and now they never would. They were history, and the future belonged to the two couples celebrating the fact that things were going their way and their future in Wizarding Britain looked bright.
The End.
A/N – I want to thank everyone for reading and supporting this story. Hopefully you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Now it's time to sort my Christmas stories out, and I'll be back soon with the first of my festive offerings. Thanks again for reading.