A/N: I forgot to mention that Hermione's parents were killed by Voldemort and so were Seamus Finnigann's.
Harry Potter and the Unicorn's Children

Chapter 2

Hermione was in heaven. Her cousin Rose had recently added a large library to the house, mostly for herself and Hermione. The boys really had no interest in it.

Hermione was in the middle of a thick book on magical beasts when Rose returned.

"Oh, found that, did you," she said upon seeing Hermione's book. "Just added that."

"It's really good."

"I know. I've read it six times. I've got to do a bit of homework. Snape wants me to look up a potion for him in Most Potent Potions II. The Hogwarts library doesn't have it and I won't let him in the house. He'd die. It's too cheerful here."

"Most Potent Potions are over there. Shelf 12, books 7, 8, and 9."

"Thanks." She went off to find it. Harry came in.

"Have you seen Rose?"

"Shelf 12." Hermione resumed reading.

*~*~*

Rose was copying down the potion when Harry tapped her shoulder.

"Rose."

"Hm?"

"Can I invite some friends here for the summer?"

"Sure. The Als just sent me a bunch more tickets. I need to do something with them."

"Okay. How many can I invite?"

"Go ahead and invite all the Golds. I haven't seen my in-laws since my wedding, anyways."

"Sure!"

"I'll be right back. I've got to give this potion to Snape."

"I thought you called him Dad."

"Not where Sirius can hear. He'd throw a fit."

"Point taken."

He bounded of to owl his friends. Rose decided to walk through the Whomping Willow passage to the school. It took her about fifteen minutes. Snape was waiting for her on the other side.

"Do you have the potion?"

"Yes." She handed him the parchment.

"How's the family?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're not telling me something."

"The Ministry approved your adoption of Hermione."

She screamed and hugged him. "What about Harry?"

Snape didn't seem too pleased. "Black gets him."

"Oh, give it up. Call a truce or I'll make you."

He gave her the Death Stare.

"Doesn't work as well when I can do it too."

He scowled, and then smiled. Not good. When Snape was happy, someone else was about to not be.

"Bill told me."

"He did not."

"Yes he did. Boy and a girl. Let me guess. James and Lillian."

"Duh."

She groaned. "Why am I not surprised? And I know personally that Bill did not tell you. I only told him an hour ago."

He scowled again. "It was a guess."

"Whatever. Got to go make sure Harry's not blowing up the house. Bye!" She poked the knot on the root and ducked through the trunk. This time, Bill was waiting for her.

"Hi, Rosie."

"Hi, Bill. Why are you waiting for me? Did Harry blow up the house?"

"No."

"Has Daddy gone dog and messed up my kitchen for buying him dog food?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"Go look at your cousin."

She followed him back to the house. Hermione was asleep at the table she had been sitting at, her head on the book and her thumb in her mouth. Rose frowned.

"She stayed up late and got up early again, didn't she."

"Yes."

"I have got to make her let Harry do some of the work! She does everything!"

"She won't let him because he's done all the work for years. She won't let me or Sirius because we'd burn the kitchen down."

She sighed. "I'm getting Severus to make me a potion."

"Ginny's coming in an hour. She can make it."

"Okay. I'm going to take a nap."

"All right."

"Wake up Mione. It's lunchtime. Make her a sandwich or something, just don't use the stove and don't let her make it."

"Okay."

Rose went into her room and fell asleep almost immediately.

*~*~*

Hermione was woken up by her cousin-in-law tapping her on the head.

"Stop it," she moaned.

"Would you rather I shut the book? It's noon. You need to eat. You're a toothpick."

She quickly sat upright. "Oh my gosh! I need to make lunch!"

"Rose said for you not to."

She leaned back on the table, grumbling.

"I'll make a sandwich. Do you like turkey?"

"I went vegetarian."

"What about peanut butter and honey?"

"Love it. But don't use the stove."

"No one trusts me with it."

"You'd burn it. Go make yourself useful."

"Is that your motto?"

"No!"

"All right, I'm going."

Hermione went back to her book. Bill returned with her sandwich three chapters later.

"Make sure you clean up the kitchen."

"Yes, yes, I know."

He went to put away the mess he'd made. Hermione returned to her book, careful not to get sandwich crumbs on it. An hour later she was interrupted again by someone grabbing her shoulder. She whirled.

"Ron!" she yelled joyfully. She jumped up and hugged him. "Missed you."

"Missed you too. Having fun?"

"Lots! Has Harry told you about Rose yet?"

"Huh?"

"Guess not. I'm going to tell everybody else." She dragged her boyfriend back to the fireplace her friends had Flooed to. They were all there. Parvati and Padma Patil, Ginny Weasly, Dean and Seamus, the Patils' boyfriends, even Alex and Ally had turned up.

"Hi everybody!" she said.

"Hi, Mione."

"Guess what's up with Rose."

"What?"

"Did Fred and George have another prank war?"

"No," Rose said from behind them.

"Mione was just telling us something you neglected to mention in your letters," Alex said suspiciously.

"I did a vision correction spell so my eyes are permanently green now."

"Cool. Now what is it?"

Rose gave her the Death Stare. "Hint. Look for a hint."

"Not fair! Ho deep did you bury the memory?"

"Not very. Just try."

Alex did. Her eyes went wide. "Twins?! That's great!"

"Now we'll never get her back!" Ally said mournfully. Her sister kicked her.

"Don't worry; I'll start Quidditch again eventually. Besides, Em finally learned to tell the difference between a Wronski Feint and the real thing. And she's getting really good at that other Feint."

The twins grinned. "You mean the Potter Feint?"

"No! Agh!"

The girls laughed. Rose gave them the Death Stare. "Here, I'll show you your rooms. Have you had lunch yet?"

"No."

"Whatever you do, don't ask Bill to make you anything. The only people in this house who can cook are the Potter-Evans people. Meaning Harry, Mione, and me. That's all."

"What can we have?"

"A sandwich. If you want you can have a BLT."

"Ooh, goody. Do you have mayonnaise?"

"If Daddy hasn't eaten it all. He is such a dog." She giggled. The others actually understood the joke. Rose had told them about the Marauders.

They sat down at the little round kitchen table and chatted about how the Americans were going to smash the Afghans.

"Oh, that reminds me," Rose said. "I've got tickets for everyone who doesn't have one. If you do have one, these are Top Box."

No one had a ticket, except for Harry, Rose, and Mione, so they all got one.

"Oh, hi everybody," Bill said. He had just come in with the twins. Their faces lit up at the sight of the Bernards.

"Hi, Alex," Fred said.

"Hi, Ally," George said.

"Wanna come see our house?" Fred asked.

"Sure," they answered happily. They Apparated over.

"I will bet money on the fact that they will have a makeout session for an hour," Rose said, rolling her eyes. "They really missed each other. The Als kept asking about the twins in their letters, and the Weaslys kept asking if the Als asked about them."

"How's your summer been?" Ginny asked.

"Perfect. No group dreams, so aching scar. Just very, very bad morning sickness."

"Ugh. I will adopt," Ally said.

"Who says I can't?" Rose said teasingly.

"Who'd you get? Harry, Mione, or both of them?" Alex asked.

"I haven't told them."

"Rosemary Lillian Potter! Who?!"

"Hermione."

"Aw."

"Sirius got Harry."

Everyone cheered.

"It won't make much of a difference. We live in the same house."

"I guess."

They talked until dinnertime. Rose and Hermione threw them out of the kitchen and into the living room, where they watched TV.

*~*~*

Rose was helping Hermione cook dinner.

"How about pot roast, a salad, and some mashed potatoes?" Hermione said.

"You planned this, didn't you?"

"For weeks. I have the recipes memorized. There's this nice pie, too."

"Sounds good."

They got to work. They continuously had to throw the Als and the Weasly twins out of the kitchen. No on trusted them around food for good reason.

"Hermione, you'd better eat some of the pie. You're a toothpick."

"She is not. She has nice curves," Ron called from where he'd been eavesdropping. He really was right. But she had lost fifteen pounds since the beginning of summer.

"Still eat the pie."

"Fine. I love lemon meringue, anyways. Oh, the pot roast's finished. We'd better make everybody go to the dining room."

"Bill! Try to get everybody into the dining room!" Rose called into the living room. He nodded and showed them the large dining room. Rose and Hermione brought the dinner. They started a nice conversation about The Golden Phoenix.

"Fred, where did you ever get a name for that?" Ron said. He was joking. It was evident in how he touched his right upper arm, where there was a small tattoo of a gold phoenix. All the Golds had one, including Fred and George.

"Oh, some things just come to you," he said airily, waving his pot roast around on the fork.

"How did you manage to buy it?" Rose asked curiously.

"Help," George said, glancing at Harry. "I've got some really rich friends."

"What are you selling?"

"Canary Creams and our fake wands, that sort of thing. We made everything in the shop by hand," Fred said.

"And now that we've got our own house, we can have our own lab for making things without Mum yelling at us," George added.

"Your mum's nice," Rose said. "I'm thinking of making Lily's middle name Molly."

"Lillian Molly Potter," Bill said thoughtfully. "Sounds nice. Can I pick James's middle name?"

"Sure."

"Arthur. So Lillian Molly Potter and James Arthur Potter." He noticed his wife's face going rather green. "Uh-oh. Hermione, bowl!" She tossed him a large bowl from the floor. He handed it to Rose just in time. She gave her dinner to the bowl and ran to the bathroom to get rid of lunch.

*~*~*

"I'm losing my appetite," Dean announced.

"We've just learned to live with it," Harry said casually. "That's usually how I get woken up."

"Ugh," Seamus moaned.

"Seamus, who have you been staying with?" Ginny asked.

"I get shuffled around through aunts and uncles," he said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. "No luck in adoption yet."

"That sucks," Dean said.

"Seriously."

"They're better then the Durseleys," Harry said quietly. Rose, who had recently returned to the table, looked at him.

*I thought you'd gotten over that,* she said.

*Not too soon.*

Rose discovered why he kept thinking about them. *You've been dreaming about them.*

*I've been having nightmares about everything. Ginny when we'd just done the Rainbow Spell, The Durseleys, Bill dead, the Durseleys, the Death Eaters in the clearing, the Durseleys, Lucretia Riddle, the Durseleys.seeing a pattern?*

*Gosh.*

*We'd better start talking out loud again.*

*Yeah.*

Seamus was describing his latest aunt. "She's from my mum's side, so she's a witch. But she's crazy! She eats bugs! I'm serious!"

"Gross!"

They continued talking about how their summer had been and got the Bernards into describing their latest prank on the Chinese, who had lost the semi finals to them. It involved lots of Dungbombs tied to their mascot, a small Chinese Fireball.

Rose made Hermione eat three slices of pie, while herself only having a little salad. She switched off her alarm, which was set for 5 a.m. She showed everyone to their rooms and gave the toilet the rest of her dinner, then went to bed.

*~*~*

July 31 dawned warm and sunny, most likely courtesy of the weather- controlling Bernard. Rose woke up at six and threw up for three hours, waking up the rest of the house except Hermione, who she suspected would sleep until noon or later.

Fred and George got there in time for breakfast, which Ginny cooked. They had brought their presents to The Golden Phoenix yesterday.

At eleven, everyone thought of various reasons to leave except for Rose. At quarter past, Rose took Harry down to the Phoenix.

*~*~*

Harry opened the door and was ambushed by thirteen people jumping at him and yelling, "Surprise!"

He wasn't too surprised. He had had a surprise party last year as well. But he still hadn't gotten too used to having an actual party on his birthday.

"You like it?" Rose asked.

"Love it," he replied, smiling at her.

Rose and Hermione had baked a huge chocolate cake the size of the Potters' coffee table. It had red icing and said in gold icing, "Happy Birthday Harry." There was a small gold lion in one corner. There were sixteen candles around the edge of a cake that matched the icing.

"Make a wish, Harry," Rose said.

He closed his eyes, made a wish, and blew out the candles. Everyone clapped.

"Presents!" the Bernards yelled. They tossed a large, heavy gift wrapped in paper with a Quidditch design. He ripped it open and discovered the four Quidditch balls in their own box. The twins said it was from the semi finals.

"Em Grumman gave them to us to give to you," they explained. He smiled gratefully and put the box next to him.

The next present was from Hermione, who was still asleep. It was a collar for his phoenix, James, made of gold and decorated with tiny rubies. He carefully laid it on top of the Quidditch balls.

"Harry!" Ron tossed him another present. It was, once again, assorted candy from Honeydukes.

Rose had bought him a book on how to develop Animagi skills. He was a stag Animagi as far as he knew, but had only transformed once.

"There's another copy in the library," she told him.

The Weaslys had given him a 50 Galleon gift certificate to their store. The Patils had bought him his schoolbooks for the year. Sirius had gotten him.a rock.

"Ask your sister how it works," he said, smirking. Rose moaned. Everyone knew how she hated explaining things.

Ginny had gotten him a bell for James that attached to the collar from Mione.

"It lets you find him anywhere,"

"Cake!" the Weaslys yelled. Rose obediently picked up a knife and started cutting the cake.

*~*~*

"There's extra for the teachers," Rose explained.

"Since when do the teachers eat cake?" Ron asked.

"Since they're not around you," she explained.

"Oh."

"I always ate cake around you."

"You don't count. You're younger than them."

"Thanks."

She handed the first piece of cake to Harry. Everyone else scrambled to get the second. Once everyone had their cake, they sat down at the table the twins had made by pushing several smaller tables together and started a conversation about who would win the World Cup.

"Afghanistan doesn't have a chance," George said through a mouthful of cake. "Their Beaters always offend the Als and end up with various items tied to their brooms."

"Any suggestions on this year's revenge? We used Dungbombs last year."

"May I suggest Dragonbombs?"

"Perfect."

"What are Dragonbombs?"

"They look like Dungbombs but they're neon orange. They turn into a large Chinese Fireball, fly around a little than burst into green slime. Lots of green slime. But only on its targets. In this case, the Afghan team."

"Wicked!"

There was a big bang from the door. Hermione burst in, still fussing with her clothes.

"I can't believe you let me sleep so late!" she said furiously. "Who made breakfast? Who cleaned up after breakfast? Who cleaned up the wrapping paper?"

Rose stepped forward and put her hand on Hermione's shoulder. "I did," she said calmly. Privately she said, *Calm down. I didn't hurl on anything. Snape gave me a potion.*

*Oh.*

*Yeah. Oh is right.*

She led Mione over to the table. "We were just talking about what the Als are going to do to Maheen and Daheen. You know, the Afghan Beaters. They say Dragonbombs."

"That thing we stole from the Weaslys and tested on them? Sounds good."

"Yeah."

They chatted for a few more hours over more cake and vanilla mochas, which they had become addicted to over last year's trip to Salem, Massachusetts.

"Who made the mochas?" Hermione asked.

"Me," Rose said.

"I am so glad you adopted me."

"It's kind of weird, though. I have an adopted child who's five years younger than me."

"I think it's fun. It makes us more of sisters than mother and daughter."

"We are cousins."

"I guess."

They talked until Rose told them all to get home.

"The Floo powder's on the mantelpiece. The jar's labeled. Goodbye kisses now."

All the couples kissed, picked up their presents to Harry and slowly walked back to the house.

The Weaslys left first. Their house was closer. Ron kissed and hugged Hermione again, then stepped into the fireplace. The Patils followed and their boyfriends followed. (Dean and Seamus had decided to go home with them.) The last people to leave were Alex and Ally. They hugged Rose and kissed Fred and George. Finally, the house was quiet. At least reasonably quiet.

Rose's face was going green. "I think that potion wore off." She bolted for the bathroom.

*~*~*

"I wonder why they call it morning sickness at six in the evening," Harry said, staring after her.

"Dunno," Bill said, sounding much like Ron.

Hermione suppressed a giggle. *I just had a thought about James and Lily. I will bet money on their hair color,* she said to Harry.

Harry snorted. *Hey you never know. They might look like Rose and Dad.*

*Maybe.*

Bill stared at them. "Was that something mean?"

"No," they said in unison.

"Then what was it?"

Rose saved them. She came in and announced that she was going to kill her father.

"Be my guest," Sirius said.

"That's not very nice!"

"He's not very nice."

"All I need to do is threaten him with a bit of fire and he does anything I want him to."

"Tell him to wash his hair, then." Sirius grinned at his own wit.

Everyone laughed.

"I'm going to tell him that if he doesn't make the potion stronger, there will be a repeat of the Potter/Weasly conspiracy."

Everyone laughed even more, remembering how Snape was stuck in red and gold burnt robes for a week.

"There's always the Gryffindor Charm."

The Gryffindor Charm, as it was now known, was a charm that made someone's hair flash red and gold. If anyone tried to remove or change it, their own hair would flash. The Weasly twins had cast it on Malfoy the day after his expulsion.

"I wonder if Malfoy's hair is still flashing."

"I'd like to see Lucius Malfoy's hair flashing Gryffindor colors," Rose said. She despised Lucius Malfoy. He was the one who had given her the scar on her forehead.

"I want to see Malfoy dead."

"Which?"

"Both."

"Narcissa, too?"

"Um.maybe."

"Why only maybe?"

"She was a Ravenclaw."

"I know what Padma would say to that. 'Traitor!'"

"She is."

Rose yawned. "Hermione, go to bed. I've taken away your clock. Harry, you too. I'm drinking the potion tonight so I won't wake everyone up in a very unpleasant way tomorrow morning. Daddy, you too."

Everyone stumbled into their various rooms and dropped off into peaceful sleep. Harry's sleep, however, wasn't so peaceful. He had another dream.

He was standing in a stone room. Bill, Rose, Hermione and Ron were there, too. Rose was passed out in Bill's arms. Harry looked down in his own arms. A tiny face almost exactly like his own stared up at him. Hermione carried a baby that looked like Rose. Ron held something that looked like a person, but Harry couldn't be sure. He looked closer.

It was Ginny. Suddenly someone laugh. Two laughs. There was a flash of light, and the babies were no longer in anyone's arms.

Harry and Rose woke up, quickly and suddenly.