Chapter 4: Our Little Family

Maison de Létourneau, November 4th 1981 11:45pm

Another explosion rocked the manor, followed by the sound of two crying babies.

"Salaud! Sweet Merlin! Aaron!" Vendetta yelled from the nursery. That was the third time that week her husband had almost blown apart their home.

"Sorry dear! Slight mishap! Won't happen again!" Aaron called back from his potions lab in the basement.

Vendetta sighed, turning her attention back to the babies who had been spooked by the explosion. She tried to calm them down, with more than a little difficulty.

She wasn't exactly a maternal type – that was Aaron's forte – but since he had been working on brewing the modified blood adoption potion for the past few days, she'd had to take over the childcare.

Both husband and wife had taken time off to settle into their new lives as parents and so far; life had been better than they could have imagined – though every time Vendetta has to wake up in two hour intervals she questions her decision to be a parent and mourns the loss of an uninterrupted good night's sleep.

The only moment of reprieve she gets is when the babies have their nap.

"Finally." The dark skinned woman breathed a sigh of relief; having just settled the babies down and she backed out of the nursery gently.

BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

"AARON ELIAS LÉTOURNEAU! FILS DE PUTE! I WILL MURDER YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS!"

Aaron's Potions Lab, 11:50pm

Aaron was practically bouncing where he stood; unable to keep still. He was beaming from ear to ear as he waited impatiently for the potion to cool enough for him to bottle.

He hadn't felt this excited in so long.

Just to think, he'll finally be a parent! Him! A parent! It was almost too much for him to process. He had given up hope of ever having children a long time ago.

The babies had been living with them for the past four days but they have yet to name them, choosing to wait until the potion had been administered.

"Will you please stop vibrating and bottle up the damn potion?" Vendetta asked, even though she too had hardly been able to contain her excitement when Aaron had called her into the basement to tell her the potion was completed.

"Sorry, I can't help it. Darling, our children are finally going to be ours biologically and legally." You could hear the smile in his voice as he ladled the clear potion into two small vials. "I still can't believe you kidnapped a child."

Vendetta didn't reply, she simply smirked smugly and shrugged lightly so as not to disturb the children in her arms.

"And here I thought you were supposed to be enforcing the law, not breaking it." Aaron grinned.

"What can I say; I'm Vendetta Létourneau. I'm allowed to do whatever it is I wish."

"That's one of the many reasons why I love you." Aaron smiled. He puckered his lips in request for a kiss, which Vendetta gladly obliged.

She leaned down and pressed a sweet, chaste kiss to his lips. As they pulled away, the older baby reached across to latch onto Aaron.

Vendetta chuckled. "I guess he wants you to hold him."

Aaron kissed the baby's cheek. "Not now my love, I need to finish the potion first, it's almost midnight."

He turned to Vendetta. "First we both need to add a drop of our blood to one of the vials; this will be for the oldest baby. For the second vial, only your blood is required." Aaron explained.

He picked up the dagger he had previously laid out and pricked his thumb, he then added a drop of blood to one vial.

"Your turn, darling." Aaron took the babies from his wife to free her hands up for the next step.

Vendetta slashed the dagger across her skin. She held her bleeding thumb over the vials, allowing only a single drop of her blood to fall into each.

Aaron healed their cuts with a wave of his hand and they watched as the potion slowly reacted with the blood; changing from a thin, clear potion into a thicker dark red potion with smoke curling out of both vials.

Vendetta took the youngest baby from Aaron and picked up the lighter coloured potion.

Aaron picked up the darker vial and looked up at his wife with a smile.

"Let's do this."

Nursery, November 5th 1981 4:05am

"How long do you think they'll stay asleep?" Vendetta asked. Both her and her husband were in the nursery, waiting for the babies to wake.

Before Aaron could reply, the newborn baby stirred and blinked slowly.

"Hi baby, you look so cute." Aaron cooed, gently lifting the tiny newborn out of the crib.

Vendetta stroked a finger through the baby's dark brown hair – which had previously been blonde.

"His hair colour changed, his skin too." The baby's skin was darker than the fair shade it had been a few hours ago, it was now like a perfect mix between Vendetta's and Aaron's complexion.

"Even the texture of his hair is different." Aaron grinned, taking in the baby's features. "Aw, look his eyes are hazel. Just like mine, though his have a greener tint."

Vendetta smiled down at her youngest son. "What are we going to name him? He has gone without a name for five days now."

Aaron hesitated a little. "Pinkerton had been calling him Doménique while he was carrying him and I really like the name Maël because he's my little Prince."

"Doménique Maël Létourneau. I like it. It's pretty, like him." Vendetta smiled down at the baby blinking big, hazel eyes up at her.

Nursery, 8:25am

Aaron peeked into the nursery to check if the older baby was awake. It was expected that the baby would sleep for longer than Doménique as he had more transformations, what with having to go from a muggle to a vampire. Aaron was just thankful that the process was somewhat painless while he was in a potion induced sleep.

"Hello little man, you are so cute." Aaron cooed as he stepped into the nursery. The baby was sat up in his crib, little fists rubbing his eyes. He looked up as he heard Aaron's voice and held his arms up in request to be picked up.

Aaron lifted him out of the crib and into his arms. He peppered kisses all over the baby's face, thoroughly enjoying the squeals of laughter coming from the one year old.

"Let's go find your baby brother. I want a picture of the two of you together." Aaron made his way to Vendetta's study, knowing Doménique was in there with her. He couldn't wait to show off the baby in his arms to Vendetta, he looked nothing like the both of them thought he would.

"Your hair is so beautiful, I can't wait to braid it when you get older." He carded his fingers through the baby's thick black hair. "You're also going to need a name; I can't keep calling you baby."

There was also the issue of the birth certificates. Doménique is a newborn and filing his birth certificate with the Ministry will be no hassle, however the muggle baby is over a year old, it would be nearly impossible to file his new birth certificate into the Ministry's records without anyone suspecting foul play.

He had voiced his concerns to Vendetta and her cryptic response had been 'Do not worry your pretty little head over such trivial matters. I will take care of it, I have more than a few tricks up my sleeve.' Aaron had never had a reason to doubt his wife, he wasn't about to start now.

When he reached the study, Aaron entered quietly so as not to disturb Vendetta. She was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, speaking rapidly in French with her secretary, Carmen Pinkerton.

Aaron – knowing how much his wife hated interruptions – waited patiently for her to finish her conversation on the floo.

If anything, it was amusing to listen to her berate Pinkerton. Those two are just as stubborn as each other.

"Pinkerton, for Merlin's sake you should not be at work. Less than five days ago you pushed out another human being. You are to be on maternity leave." Vendetta switched back to English and continued arguing back and forth with Pinkerton for a few more minutes before she demanded to speak with Deighton.

"I do not care what it takes, you have my permission to do everything in your power to keep Pinkerton out of the office; tie him to the bed if you must."

Deighton spluttered and hastily stammered his way through an explanation of how he and Pinkerton weren't in that kind of a relationship.

Vendetta cleared her throat awkwardly. "I apologise, I assumed you and he were an item; seeing as you always lose the ability to function whenever he so much as looks at you."

Aaron winced, his wife was never one to mince words; she doesn't have any filter, so to speak, she simply blurts out the truth.

He approached her slowly. "Darling our son is awake. Might I steal you away for a bit? Plus Deighton seems like he needs time to recover, your words were rather blunt."

Vendetta ended the floo call quickly. "Zut, Aaron, why did you not let me know the second he was up?" She hurried over to her husband and stole the baby from him.

Vendetta looked at the little boy in her arms, unable to keep the smile off her face as she took in his changed appearance. His complexion was a lovely, light caramel, similar to Doménique's. There was something almost ethereal about the baby and Vendetta felt her heart swell with love when he blinked those beautiful eyes up at her.

She gasped lightly, "Aaron look, his eyes changed. They are such a vibrant green, a carbon copy of my own."

"If he's anything like you, he's going to be quite the brave young man when he's older."

Vendetta smiled. "He's my little miracle, my legacy. Théron Louis Létourneau." Saying his name in her French accent sounded so beautiful.

Aaron picked up Doménique from his travel cot and stood next to his wife.

"We did it Vendetta, our own little family."

Notes:

Théron [Hunter] - Teh-rohn

Louis [Brave Knight] - Lou-ee

Doménique [Unique, Special] - Doh-meh-nick

Maël [Prince] - Mah-el

Létourneau [Starling] - Leh-tor-no

Deighton - Day-ton

Graeme - Graham