I wake up sprawled over my bed. I don't even remember coming back here. I sigh, it feels way too early considering how late I was up last night. I look at the clock. It's only seven thirty. I let out a groan into my pillow. Then I'm sitting up. What was that noise? It sounds like a child laughing but it can't be, not here.
Curiosity wins out over my tiredness and I dress. I open the door and the laughter gets louder. I eyebrows crease in thought. I tread quietly down the stairs trying to peak into the living room.
"I'm going to catch you." I hear Draco say with a smile in his voice.
"No!" I hear the child scream but laugh.
"You can't escape the tickle monster."
This is just getting wierd. I take deep breath and walk the rest of the way. I open the door to see Draco tickling a young boy screaming with laughter underneath him.
They don't notice me and I take in the scene. I look at the little boy he must be about one. His laughter is infectious I find myself smiling too. Then I notice the hair. It's exactly the same shade as Draco's and my stomach turns. No way.
Suddenly Draco looks up and sees me. He smiles at me before looking back down.
"We have an intruder." Draco sits up on his heels.
The little boy looks over at me a look of curiosity on his face. He stands himself up and grabs Draco's hand. I watch as he pulls him towards me. I take a closer a look at his face and something else looks familiar to me. He stops just infront of me and looks at Draco pointing at me.
"That's Hermione." Draco says. The little boy nods like he knows.
Then I gasp and my hand is over my mouth. His hair changes to the same shade as mine.
"He likes you." Draco laughs as he bends down and picks him up. "Hermione this is..."
"Teddy." I interrupt him.
"Yup." Teddy puts his head on Draco's shoulder and his hair changes back to white blonde. "Aunt Dromeda has gone away for the weekend so he's staying with me."
I nod I don't know what to say. Now that I know it's Teddy I realise the familiar features I saw is Remus. He has his eyes. I feel my throat close with the effort not to cry.
"I'll just make some tea." I croak out before I turn and almost run to the kitchen.
I grab the sides of the counter taking deep breaths. This was a shock. I won't cry. Then memories swirl around my head. Tonks at Christmas morphing to make us laugh. Remus as my professor at Hogwarts. Them together however briefly it was. I only saw Teddy once as a baby at their funeral.
I don't realise I've lost the struggle not to cry until a tear hits my hand. I look at it pooling on my hand with my white knuckles from holding on so tight.
"Are you ok?" It makes me jump. I don't turn round I use my sleeves to wipe my tears away.
"I'm fine." I say putting on the kettle. I know I don't sound fine I can hear the tightness in my voice.
"I'm sorry I should have told you Teddy was coming."
"It's ok." I still don't turn around as I reach for a cup. "It was just a shock. I havnt seen him since..."
I can't finish but I don't think I have to. I take another steadying breath. Then I feel his hand on my lower back.
"Don't." I whisper. I don't want his comfort. I will cry again.
"It's ok to cry you know." I let out a snort of laughter. "What?"
"I'm not going to cry again. Enough tears have been shed from the war."
"Ok fine." His hand stays where it is and he doesn't sound convinced. "I'm taking Teddy to the park soon if you want to join us."
"Sure." I smile at him and move away breaking his contact.
I don't go back into the living room straight away. I stand and drink the tea I don't really want. I need to compose myself. I know Harry is Teddy's godfather and he goes to see him regularly, but not Draco. He's obviously close to his aunt too if she trusts him enough to leave Teddy here.
I'm not sure how much later it is, I'm stuck in my thoughts, when Draco pops his head in saying they are ready to go. I nod and empty my almost full cup of tea in the sink before I leave with them.
We head to the park with Teddy in his pram and Draco pushing it. He looks so natural doing it but it just seems odd to me at the same time.
"If you don't concerntrate on where your going and stop staring at me you'll fall over." He laughs.
"Sorry." I laugh back "It's just this picture is so surreal."
"What, me pushing a pram?"
"Yes." He laughs with me. I look around as we reach the park and realise it's still quite early. "Why did we come this early?"
"Well Teddy hasn't quite got used to his metamorphosis yet. When he gets excited his hair changes. So we have to come when it's quiet."
I sit on a bench and watch them together. Draco's right about coming when it's quiet. Teddy's hair is changing constantly. I watch him giggle as he comes down the slide and his hair changes from green to red.
Draco puts Teddy on the swing and I sit on the swing next to him swinging at opposite times pulling faces and making him laugh.
"I think it's time for us to go." Draco says after awhile .
"No!" Teddy shouts and stomps his foot his hair turning brown. The colour reminds me of Remus and Tonks. This must be his natural colour.
"I think I might have some choc choc for good boys at home." Draco says and I watch Teddy think it over his hair gradually getting lighter until it matched Draco once more. Teddy seems to give in with a nod. "Come on then little man."
Later that afternoon with Teddy napping, I take Draco a cup of tea. "Thanks." He says.
"So" I start as I sit down.
"I was waiting for this." He laughs. "Ask away Granger."
"You and Andromeda are close then?" I smile.
"Pretty close. I mean she's the only family I have now." He shrugs. "Apart from Teddy."
"Does Teddy stay here often?"
"Once a month or so."
"Why haven't I seen him before now?" I've been here a few months now, surely I should have seen him.
"Andromeda thought the house might be a bit crowded." He shrugs as he reaches for the tv remote. "I told her it was fine but she thinks she imposes with this one night a month."
"Where does he sleep?" The thought had just occurred to me. All the bedrooms were taken.
"With me in my bed." His gaze is still on the TV flicking through the channels. "He always has done."
"Oh." For some reason I thought he would have stayed with Harry and Ginny.
"Have we finished with the Spanish inquisition now Granger?" He doesn't look at me but I see the smile on his face.
"For now." I say as I curl up and drink my tea.
I have a few more questions for him, mainly about his parents but I'll leave that for another time. I'm curious about what happened between them.
It's not long before I get an opportunity to ask. It's later that night, or should I say early the next morning and there is a thunder storm. I love thunder storms. I find them refreshing. I'm sat by the back door in an armchair I've conjured with a hot chocolate and a book watching the storm.
I think back to my own parents. My mother and I used to sit like this when there was a thunder storm. Sometimes we'd talk sometimes we would sit in silence with our own books. I remember the way she would count the seconds in between the lightning and the thunder to see how far away the storm was. I see a lightening strike and count myself.
"1...2...3...4...5...6" then the clap of thunder came.
"What are you doing?"
"Dammit Draco." I say my heart pounding in my chest again. "Do you always have to scare the living Shit out of me?"
He holds his hands up in surrender. "Sorry. I presumed you heard me coming I wasn't exactly quiet."
"I was thinking." I say turning away from him and back to the storm.
"About?"
I sigh. "My parents if you must know."
The next thing I know he conjures amother armchair and he's sitting beside me. "What happened to them?" I dont say anything. Do I really want to tell him this? "Come on. I'll tell you about my parents I know your dying to know."
He smirks at me and I curse my curiosity. "Do you want a hot chocolate while we talk?" I ask biding my time.
"Sure. Why not?" I get up and begin to make him one and myself a new one. I feel him watching me as I make them and it makes me nervous.
I sit back down handing him his cup and he waits patiently. "It was just when the war was beginning really. Voldermort was killing muggle borns and their families. I didnt think I had another choice." I play with the rim of my cup for a second. "I.. I obliviated them. Erased myself from their memories. I sent them to Australia with new identities."
"Wow. You did that knowing you can't reverse it?" I look at him with what must be obvious sadness. Of course I knew it wasn't reversible.
"I wanted to keep them safe." I shrug. "It was hard. Really hard. I have a contact at the australian ministry who keeps a quiet eye on them."
"I'm sorry you had to do that Hermione."
I shrug. "We all had to do things we didn't want to back then."
i'm lost again in the storm for a minute seeing abother flash of lightening light up the sky.
"Well." He says bringing me back to the now. "A deal is a deal. You ready for my story?"
"Only if you want to share it." I say this but I really want to know.
"You shared yours." He smiles sadly at me. He takes a sip of his hot chocolate. Stalling just like I did probably. "This is delicious by the way."
"Thanks." I chew on my bottom lip while I wait for him to begin.
"We'll mine was after the war." He looks up at me through his lashes with a small smile. "We were in The Manor. My father was having one of his rants about muggle borns. The way things ended you would have thought he would have realised he couldn't spout that Shit any more, but no my father did it even more." He takes a deep breath before he continues. "One day I'd just had enough. The ministry had let us all off all because of Harry telling them what my mother did. For that they saw fit to give my whole family a chance. Little did they know my father would never change. Something flipped inside me and I remember just screaming at him to stop. The look on his face he was completely shocked. I'd never stood up to him before. About anything. I told him it was worthless spouting his hatred like he was. That the war was over and his side had lost. He didn't miss that I said his and not ours." He laughs sadly. "I admitted to him then that my loyalty didn't lie with him and his beliefs anymore. He didn't like that. That's when he threw me out."
"I'm sorry Draco." And I am. He shouldn't have had to go through that. None of us should have had to go through any of it.
"Anyway I begged my mother to come with me. She wouldn't. She said my father needed her. I told her I needed her too but she chose him. She told me to go to Andromeda." He was staring at his cup. "She didn't even hesitate. She just took me in. Things got a bit much with me and Teddy though. It want long after that I met Ginny and Luna and moved in here."
"Wow. I'm sorry you had to go through that Draco." I reach out and take his hand.
"I think you went though worse." He said looking at our joins hands.
"How so?" I ask confused.
"I presume you had to obliviated your parents because they would never have willingly left you." I bite my lip but don't answer which gives him his. "Both mine walked away from me and I havnt heard anything from them since. You had to make the choice for your parents who loved you. Mine never did so I never really lost anything."
"That is why you have it worse Draco." I squeeze his hand. "Anyway it's not a competition. We both lost our parents and shouldn't have. Let's leave it there."
He nods his reply. Were silent for a few moments then a rumble of thunder echos through the night and I see him flinch.
"What's the matter?"
"Well I'm not the biggest fan of thunder." I can't help the smile the forms on my face and I bite my lip to stop myself from laughing. "It's not funny."
"You're scared of thunder?" I'm not sure how long I can hold the laughter in for.
"Hold on I never said that." He grins at me. "I usually have a hot toddy with a splash of sleeping draught in it. I can't with Teddy here though."
A snot escapes me and I pull my hand from his to put it over my mouth. It was the beginning though and the laughter escapes me.
We stay up for a while talking about nothing really. I'm not sure what time it is when my eyelid droop shut then I'm vaguely aware of Draco picking me and carrying me to bed.