Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Warnings: NA

Sleepy Apologies

She tossed and turned once more, getting increasingly frustrated with her inability to sleep. Mad-Eye had taught her early in her Auror career that it was important to be able to stop your mind from replaying a stream of memories–no matter what you dealt with in the field, what you found while investigating, or how close you'd come to getting hit in a duel. And she was pretty good at it–it had helped her survive the war, hadn't it? But somehow, fighting with her kid hit differently.

She couldn't stop feeling bad about grounding him even if his football team was playing this week, or chastising herself for losing her cool when he'd gotten far mouthier than he ever had before. He was nine years old, never usually caused trouble, and he'd never lived through a war. How was he supposed to understand how badly he'd scared her if he went out for ice cream and to a friend's house after school without telling her? How was he supposed to know she'd assume the worst and spend hours roaming around Muggle London and even call Remus at Hogwarts? Teddy had really spoiled her by usually being cool, and she was usually cool, but how many times had her poor parents had to track her down or discipline her for some nonsense she'd done? Maybe she'd overreacted… he was getting older; it made sense that he wanted more freedom. And what kid hadn't said 'I hate you' to their mum? She shouldn't take it personally, shouldn't let that throw off her parenting.

The door of her bedroom creaked open and she sat up to greet the shadow in the doorframe. His curls were especially distinctive today.

"You alright, baby?" she asked.

"I couldn't sleep," Teddy said again.

"Yeah?" she asked, sitting up. "Me neither… come here, then."

Teddy didn't need to be asked twice; he crawled into bed with her and she threw open the blankets so that he could get comfortable. She reached out a hand to put in on his shoulder, and her sweet, sensitive little boy snuggled closer.

"I'm sorry Mum," he mumbled finally.

"I'm sorry too," she said. "Let's not do this again, yeah?"

"Yeah," Teddy agreed, bunching up the blanket as he pulled it closer to himself. Remus always told her that it served her right for passing on her blanket-stealing genes.

But either way, she slept like a baby.