Fall, 2019
September First. The date didn't sneak up on her this time. It hadn't in six years. Just as every other school year, this year had something different: the addition of another trunk, just as it had had so many years ago. The boys were bickering, as always, and her daughter, her look-alike daughter, was chattering away with her cleverest cousin. The girls stopped their conversation and looked over at someone, a giggle bubbling up through both of them.
Ginny looked up from her charges and saw, with a start, Draco and Lucius Malfoy. A small shake of her head and she locked eyes with the older man, and gave him a cold, but not ice-cold, smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. He nodded his infuriating nod, eyes just as chilled, and she shifted her (much warmer) gaze to the little boy, who was looking at the youngest Potter with a supposed-to-be-unreadable, but obvious to the trained eye, look on his face. It was the look she'd noticed the dark-haired man whose arms wrapped around her waist give her so long ago: controlled curiosity, hidden by a veneer of pride. He was smitten.
She bit her lip, then elbowed her husband right under his ribcage. He stopped his conversation to look at her, at which time she gave a slight not of her head at her memory's ghost. Her daughter had left her cousin to meander towards young Scorpius; a shy smile on his face told Gin two things: that her daughter, whose face she couldn't see (but she knew exactly how the younger was acting - Ginny did the same thing once, long ago), was going to have courage she didn't possess…
And that she better put the Malfoys on the Christmas Card List.
Expecto Patronum.