Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. Everything that you recognise belongs to J K Rowling.

By the time Al, Scorp and I lugged our tired, sorry selves to the Leaky Cauldron with our shopping, it was just about lunchtime, and I was hungry enough to eat both of the squabbling boys with me as an appetiser before an entire roasted hippogriff.

"Why would you add ketchup to your kippers? You wouldn't have steak with ketchup-"

"You are such a prole-"

"- I can't believe you didn't tell me when you snogged Katerina Hendricks!"

"Merlin, Albus, that was in fourth year-"

"WE'RE GOING TO BE HEADS TOGETHER!"

What? That's definitely not either of them shrieking –

A whirl of screaming red whooshed past me and attached itself to Al in a tangle of pale limbs and flaming red hair. Beside him, Scorp dropped his bags and broke into a sweat.

Rose Weasley pulled away enough from Al to shout into his face again. "WE'RE THE HEADS!"

Al's face split into a wide grin. "That's fantastic! I was fucking afraid that I'd be stuck with Davies!"

Rose stepped away from Al with a sniff that clearly conveyed that she'd never doubted who'd fill the role of Head Girl. "Blair," she smiled, reaching over to hug me in greeting. "I heard you're the new Slytherin Quidditch Captain. McLaggen's ours." She couldn't quite catch the nose-wrinkle of disgust that accompanied saying McLaggen's name.

I smirked. "Don't worry, Rosie. I'll wipe the pitch with him, just for you".

She scowled. "Don't call me that." But she took the sting out of it by patting me good-naturedly on the back before we released each other. We'd never been close friends, but being almost family kind of counts for something. Out of politeness, she inclined her head in Scorpius' direction primly. "Malfoy." Scorp's spine was absolutely rigid as he executed a lame half bow in response.

Lovesick fool.

Rolling her eyes, she turned around. "Aunt Ginny, Lily, and Mum are already inside. Get a move on; I've starving." She began marching back into the pub. "And, Malfoy, Katerina Hendricks? Trashy."

And she whipped her head of ridiculously bushy hair around and disappeared into the Leaky Cauldron.

Scorpius looked so crestfallen that I moved over to pat him on the back. "You alright, mate?"

"She hates me," he whispered, kicking at a cobblestone in frustration.

I winced. It's true. Rose is completely fine with me, and we're closer to friends than acquaintances on the sliding scale of a relationship, but she's always been unreasonably cold to Scorpius.

Al shrugged. "Birds are crazy," he supplied eloquently.

"She's your cousin," I reprimanded.

Al shrugged again and started moving towards the pub's entrance. "So are you. Doesn't mean you're not crazy, either."

I resented that. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he'd already gone through the door. Grunting, I hefted my shopping up and jerked my head towards the pub. "C'mon, Loverboy. Let's go meet the parents."

Hermione Weasley is one of those people who feel the need to engage the 'odd one out' – be it at work, at a party, or just at lunch – in conversation so as to ensure that the other person is no longer left out. Scorp and I are, through no fault of anybody's, generally a little left out during any Potter/Weasley gathering that we've ended up at, so we tend to spend a great deal of time talking to her. And since she has no idea of what to talk to us about apart from Hogwarts, we only ever talk about school.

"So, Blair, Scorpius; what NEWTs will you both be taking, this year?"

Scorp dropped his fork at being addressed by his crush's war-hero, ultra-power-woman mother, and dove under the table to retrieve it and possibly put an end to himself with it right there and then.

I clamped down on the impulse to snigger (which would be extremely unkind) and smiled at Hermione in an attempt to distract her from the blonde bimbo rummaging about our feet. "I'm doing Potions, DADA, Transfiguration, Charms, Ancient Runes, and Muggle Studies."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "And I suppose that Muggle Studies will be your easy O?"

I beamed at her winningly. "All of them are easy Os."

Hermione was saved from my cockiness and Scorp was saved from having to eventually answer her question by Aunt Ginny, who leapt to her feet with an exclamation of shock as the tinkle of the bell above the pub door heralded the arrival of new patrons.

"Luna!"

Eh?

Hermione was out of her chair like a shot, weaving through patrons to get to the rather wispy looking woman standing in the doorway. I raised my eyebrows and poked Al, who was so deep into his shepherd's pie that he was about to start a relationship with it. "Who's that?"

Scorp emerged, breathless, at my elbow. "What?"

Al looked up and narrowed his eyes at the puff of blonde hair that was the only part visible of the woman who was now being hugged to death by Hermione. As we looked on, Aunt Ginny charged at the two women and engulfed them both in a bear hug. "I reckon that's Aunt Luna. I haven't seen her since I was like, eight. She and her husband – Rolf Scamander, the grandson of the bloke who wrote our Care of Magical Creatures textbook – upped and left for Southeast Asia to hunt ring-tailed singaroos or something like that."

"Huh."

Then, two boys ducked into the pub, looking slightly amused at the emotional knot of women blocking the doorway.

And they were hot.

"Who are they?" I asked interestedly. Rose, catching on to my tone, whirled around in her chair to stare as well, and she couldn't quite help the sound of appreciation that bubbled up in her throat. I concurred. Scorp, who had yet to lever himself back up into his chair, scowled mightily and heaved himself up with a clatter that no one took notice of.

Al's brow wrinkled. "I think that they're her twin sons – their names are alliterative and I forgot both the starting letter and the rest of the names – and they should be in our year. I remember them being a little less…"

"Fit?" Rose supplied, eyeing the shift in muscle as one of the boys crossed his arms.

"Yeah". Al frowned. "And put-together. Aunt Luna always had them in some ridiculous contraption to ward off nargles."

Finally, the three women broke apart, and the entire group traipsed back to our table. "Kids," Aunt Ginny announced, "This is Aunt Luna, and these are her twin sons, Lorcan and Lysander."

There was a polite murmur of greeting around the table as all of the school-going teenagers sized each other up. Scorp looked like he was in agony as he tried to assess his competition for Rose's affection. To be perfectly honest, Scorp's cute in a blonde, boyish kind of way, but if one's looking for pure, unadulterated hotness, he's completely out of the running. The twins were identical, but there were obvious differences between them – differently placed freckles, a slight difference in hair colour, and, most obviously, one of them had a nose that had clearly been broken before.

One of them – Lorcan, I reckon, with the crooked nose – caught Rose and I unabashedly checking him out and grinned.

Merlin. Dimples.

Hermione, bless her, was entirely unaware of the heady mix of hormones under her nose as she introduced us to the Fit Wizards and Luna. "That's Lily and Albus… Harry's kids… my own Rosie Posie," – Rose's cheeks went up in flames – "… and Scorpius Malfoy, and Blair Dursley."

Luna smiled at us all dreamily. "It's lovely to meet you all. Lorcan and Lysander will be starting at Hogwarts for their last year, and it would be wonderful for them to know at least some people."

Oh, I'll get to know them. I'll get to know them very well.

"Why don't you join us for lunch?" Aunt Ginny asked, already looking about for extra seats. Lily yanked her bag off the spare chair beside her, looking thrilled. Al fidgeted a little nervously with his spoon, as if unsure of what to do with himself.

Yes! Join us! Preferably at the hip!

Luna laughed and shook her head. "We've already eaten, and we've got to find Rolf. I only dropped in to see if we'd run into anyone I knew. We've got to get our place all set up before the boys go off to school, and I'm afraid I've left Rolf wandering about the Magical Menagerie."

My aunt and Hermione both looked exceedingly disappointed. I winked at the twin who'd grinned at me, and his smile only widened. His brother was disinterestedly staring in the direction of the bar, steadfastly ignoring the awkwardness. Well, excuse you.

"Well, I'll owl you about meeting up for dinner, sometime soon. Harry and Ron will be dying to meet up." Hermione leaned over to give Luna another quick hug as the twins made casual hey bye gestures and ambled off towards the door.

With a rather lost looking smile at the rest of us, Luna waved vaguely at Aunt Ginny and skipped off in the wake of her sons.

I sat back in my chair, feeling extremely pleased with life. Hermione abandoned conversation with Scorp and I in favour of diving into full dinner-party planning mode with my aunt, leaving the rest of us to stare around at each other.

"I can't wait for school to start," Lily beamed, digging into her steak-and-kidney pie with renewed enthusiasm. Rose nodded dreamily, tucking an errant curl behind her ear in an absentminded way that had Scorp tensing beside me.

Al noticed the awkward lull and began talking about Quidditch extremely quickly. I briefly wondered why Lysander Scamander had been so interested in the bar when it didn't seem like he played for the other team and there were three perfectly good-looking girls of his own age clearly checking him out, but then my cousin demanded some input on feinting strategies, so I emptied my head of all but Quidditch and thought no more of it.

The first of September is always a little bit on the manic side.

"Dudders, tell your daughter to hurry up!"

"Mum, are my lucky knickers out of the wash, yet?"

"The car's started; c'mon, let's go!"

"MEOW!"

I almost killed myself (and Princess, the family cat) hurtling down the stairs while zipping up my backpack and trying to wrestle myself into a Harpies Quidditch hoodie – a situation which my father was entirely unsympathetic about as he pretty much snatched me from certain face-plant and threw me at the front door. "Let's MOVE!"

My trunk, which had been packed and waiting by the front door since five minutes ago when I levitated it there while trying to pull on my socks from the second floor landing, was rapidly heaved into the car boot to the tune of my father freaking the fuck out, and then I was leaping into the backseat.

My mother didn't even wait for my father to completely close his door before she stepped on the gas and floored it to King's Cross.

Not that flooring it meant anything in London traffic.

I sighed as Mum nervously inched her way between a bus and a minivan that was a little too close for comfort. "I really could have just taken a portkey to the station, y'know. I know that this stresses you out."

I wasn't actually talking about the traffic.

Daddy's reply was terse. "We have sent you off every year that you've gone. It's your last one; we can do it one more time."

With another heaving sigh, I settled back into the seat. My last year. I didn't even want to think about leaving; my life had revolved around Hogwarts and Quidditch for the past six years, and I honestly did not know what I was going to do with myself after it. I mean, I could always play Quidditch, but it's not like a lot of people make it in the leagues. My grandparents Dursley were expecting me to go to university, but it wasn't like I had A'levels to get me into any of them. So.

I'd figure it out soon enough.

We were parked and tearing towards the platform with about fifteen minutes to spare – Daddy's shudder at passing through the barrier was even less pronounced than last year's, which was progress – and then we were in the magical world.

The Hogwarts express sat like a queen amongst her subjects, wreathed in billowing steam and basking in the morning sun. The platform was incredibly crowded, but as we picked our way through the throng in the search of a little patch of empty space to conduct all our good-bye business, individual huddles became more easily discernable in the mass. The Malfoys were easily distinguishable from the crowd – both Scorp and his father had hair brighter than the fucking sun – and they were the very picture of pureblood aristocracy. I steered my parents in the opposite direction. Something about Mr Malfoy made them a little nervous. I didn't blame them. Draco Malfoy had a way of making you feel all of two feel tall with just a look. It's a miracle that Scorp wasn't more socially impaired than he already was. We also passed the Potter-Weasley clan, but decided not to join them, given the crush of paparazzi that seemed intent on blinding everyone in the vicinity every time my uncle so much as twitched his eyebrow. Aunt Ginny looked like she was about to kill something with her bare hands; Lily was stoically engaged in conversation with one of her friends brave enough to sidle up to the maelstrom of press and completely ignoring the photographer who practically had himself wedged under her elbow. Al wasn't anywhere to be seen, but he was probably being dragged around by Rose (also missing from the tiny sea of gingers), getting a head start on Head business. I kept a look out for the Scamander twins, but, as expected, didn't find them. The platform was a mess.

We ended up being squeezed between a pillar and an extremely emotional family sending their first child off to Hogwarts. Daddy cleared his throat, looking a little lost. "It's your last year," he began unnecessarily. "Be good and study hard. Also…" – and here, he shared a brief look with my mother – "You should make a decision as to what you will be doing next year. We'll talk more about it during Christmas, but I need you to be thinking about it in the meantime."

I winced inwardly, but nodded and reached out to my father for a hug. My mother slid an arm around my waist and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek. "We love you, darling. Write us when you get settled."

"HEY Dursleys; hey!"

Our group hug was rather rudely interrupted by a fourth dark head thrust under my armpit – with an exclamation of disgust, I discovered a very frantic looking Al Potter trying to squeeze himself between myself and my father.

"Sweet Merlin, Al-"

"Hide me!" he hissed, ducking behind Daddy's bulk. "She grabbed me early and we loaded all our trunks into the prefect's compartment, but I made a run for it when she wanted me to find every first year on the bloody platform and fucking hold their hands as they board the goddamn train."

Al's pretty much ambivalent about children – he prefers it if he can give the child back to wherever it came from, but he won't go out of his way to play kindergarten teacher – which is something that Rose is more than keen on doing.

"Err. Hello, Albus…?" Daddy raised an eyebrow as Al burrowed deeper into our communal Dursley hug. Al turned around to fix him with an anguished look.

"You don't understand," he moaned.

My mother's lips twitched. She loves Al's theatrics; I have no idea why.

And Al was still going.

"… The bloody platform's a nightmare, especially with all the hit wizards wandering about and getting into everybody's way…"

I took a step back, surprised. "Hit wizards?"

Al threw me a look of complete exasperation. "Yes. Plainclothes hit wizards, sent here by my father and the paranoid freaks at the Auror office."

Mum began to look a little suspicious. "What are hit wizards?"

"Don't worry, Auntie Di." Al flapped a hand at a man who was clearly trying to look inconspicuous as he lounged randomly against a pillar, and another who was casually prodding his way through the crowd with the tip of his wand. "They're just excessively heavy-handed. And there's been an explosion of trainees at the Auror office within the last twenty-five years. It's apparently the coolest job, ever. No one knows what to do with them, so they get grunt work. Like this."

I furrowed my brow. "They're really that panicked about the One World thing?"

Al shrugged, cast a wary look about, and finally stepped out from behind my father's belly. "Dad says it's better to be safe than sorry. I reckon about ninety per cent of it is war reflex."

Daddy paled a little at the mention of war. Apparently a dementor had tried to kiss him when he was with Harry one summer right before it broke out. It did not do wonders for his acceptance of the wizarding world. And, now that I actually looked, I did see people who looked a little out of place, just by the virtue of the fact that they weren't attached to any families. And there were quite a few of them.

Oh, well.

The train gave a warning hoot, prompting Al and I to leap to attention. "We'd best hop to it," Al mumbled, giving my mother a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. "Bye, Dursleys!"

With a wave at my bewildered muggle parents and a hasty declaration of love, I snatched up my trunk and joined the sudden flood of students scrambling to get onto the train, struggling to keep up with the luggage-less-and-therefore-more-mobile Al. There was a great deal of jostling about, so it came as no surprise that my trunk ran over something that proceeded to swear extremely loudly. Wincing, I turned around to find a wizard hopping about on a foot, cursing darkly. Sighing, I pointed my wand at his foot and muttered a pain-relieving charm for bruises that all Quidditch players eventually learned.

The man looked up, a little stunned at how rapidly the pain was fading – I knew from experience that the feeling was complete bliss, especially when it was followed by a very hot shower and a mani-pedi night.

"Thanks." He smiled briefly, and disappeared before I could reply – or apologise for bumping into him in the first place. Huh. He seemed vaguely familiar, but I was pretty sure that I didn't actually know him – he was Chinese, dark-haired and extremely tanned, with teeth that gleamed white in a crooked smile.

Al discovered me standing there and frowning about two seconds later, following which he proceeded to flip out and demand to know if I was interested in attending Hogwarts at all this year. He then took my luggage from me and got both me and the trunk onto the train faster than I could say Quidditch, telling me to find a goddamn cabin free of idiots that he could handle being in after a three-hour prefect meeting.

And then he flounced away.

I rolled my shoulders and sidestepped a gaggle of Hufflepuff sixth-years to barge into an empty compartment that they'd clearly had their eyes on – hey, you snooze, you lose – and settled into it, knowing that Scorp would appear sooner or later. His mother always insisted on holding on to him until the train would actually start moving, and then his father would have to literally pry him from Astoria Malfoy's perfectly toned arms and toss him into the train. What a sweetheart.

I flopped down onto the seat just as the train began to move and rested my head against the window, trying to catch a last glimpse of my parents. They weren't anywhere in sight, but the same man I'd bumped into was standing close to the edge of the platform, staring at the train inscrutably. He wasn't with anybody – could he be a hit wizard that I'd seen over the holidays when James had friends over at the Potters when I was visiting with Al?

No, I thought, watching him melt into the crowd as we pulled away from the station. He just didn't feel like he could be an auror.

So who the fuck was he, and why the fuck did I feel like I should care?

A/N: I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to update! School's been absolutely mad. Please, PLEASE review!