Skylar Ophelia Malfoy
Alecia Tristyn Malfoy
Dockstreet 43
WC1E 7JL
London
United Kingdom
Draco Malfoy stared at the letters on the grand kitchen table with a resigned sigh. Time had snuck by faster than it should have been allowed, and now, it was too late: his girls were off to Hogwarts.
As much as he liked to pretend, Leshia and Skylar were no longer the small girls he'd been abandoned with when Hermione tragically disappeared all those years ago. They had all but grown up, both physically and mentally, and neither of their parents had been there to observe the growth.
With Hermione's sudden disappearance, Draco knew he should have been there for his kids, sharing their sorrow, giving them the love of a father was the least he could do - but he was selfish and had thrown himself into being a slave for the Ministry.
It's been years since the war and even when Draco had emerged as one of the Heroes, the Wizarding World still labelled him a sinner. So he atoned for his sins, foregoing his daughters in the process. (Draco won't admit that this was his coping mechanism: throwing himself in work, keeping himself busy day and night, away from the house, away from the two people who reminded him of his missing wife so much that it hurt looking at them)
He looked down at the letter in his hand, brain whirling back to the memories of last night, when Albus Dumbledore had visited him, proposing an offer Draco had accepted within a heartbeat but was regretting now.
What on earth had possessed him to agree to become the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor? A professor! He had never even taught the Auror trainees, forget about teaching a bunch of hormonal, reckless, and extremely dramatic children!
Draco shook his head and looked down at the letter again. This made the depressive thoughts about his girls reappear in his head.
To say Leshia would be furious would be an understatement. The girl had been so looking forward to going to Hogwarts that she would wait for a letter every summer to see if they might send for her a few years early. Unforgiving, proud, vengeful, too much like him.
Skylar too, was not much better than her sister. If anything, she was even worse than Leshia when she wanted to be. The girl had inherited all of his and Hermione's negative traits at extreme, and Draco feared the day her patience reached the limit.
In a whirlwind of sudden energy the heavy doors in the drawing room suddenly flew open, giving way to the little blur of eleven-year-old Leshia Malfoy. Shoulder-length blonde wavy hair flying behind her and a permanent expression of mischief plastered on her face, as she stood right in front of her father, looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.
Draco saw the underlying worry on her face.
"Has it come?" The words came tumbling from her mouth, almost bouncing on her feet as she tried to peer at the letter her father was holding.
Behind Leshia in the hallway her two greatest friends and allies in the world had crept in: Katie Potter and Rachel Weasley. Clutched in their hands were two letters and instantly Draco realised what had his daughter so hopeful (and also worried)
They had evidently received their letters that morning at the burrow, where all three best friends had been staying for the past two weeks, with the notable absence of a letter for Leshia. The poor girl had been in a state wondering whether she wasn't good enough for Hogwarts after all. Was she to be a squib the rest of her life as her sister had been trying to convince her?
"We will consider those few incidents of accidental magic a - well, an accident - if you didn't get the letter." Skylar was smiling as she heaved two identical bags inside the home. She walked towards Draco, standing beside him to take the letter and reading the contents silently on the envelope. "It's addressed to both of us? Good Merlin, seems like Hogwarts is short of parchments now."
Leshia snatched the letter from her sister's hand, tearing open the envelope impatiently and clutching the letter so tight that her knuckles had turned white.
Draco noticed her expressions, her increasing glee as she almost finished reading the letter.
"I am going to Hogwarts too! Finally!" The girl jumped on her sister first, hugging her tight then moved to her friends and the three started dancing a random dance form that the spectators weren't aware of. What they knew was that it included moving in a circle and throwing your hands around.
"Ginny told her it was nothing to worry about," Skylar sounded tired and fond, looking at the glee on her little sister's face.
"She wouldn't be Leshia if she did not worry for no reason." Draco replied, mirroring Skylar's expression and tone.
The two continued to watch the youngest member of their family for a few minutes before Skylar turned to look at Draco, a loving smile on her face and Draco reciprocated her look, raising a hand to pat her head.
"We missed you there, Dad." Skylar said. "Harry, Ginny, Ron, the rest of the Weasleys - you should meet them some time, Dad, even if you think Fred and George will turn your hair into the trademark Weasley red, making you the honorary Weasley."
The father-daughter duo giggled at that.
Hazel eyes looked up at him, earnest and so admiring that Draco wanted to fall on his knees and hug his daughter, weeping all his sorrows out to her. But he held it in. He can't be weak. Not again.
"Well," Skylar sighed dramatically, as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders and shook her head disappointedly at the three dancing witches in the middle of the drawing room. "Let me be the coolie again and heave all our stuff to our room, then we go to Diagon Alley, right?"
"Right," Draco agreed and ruffled her hair, laughing loudly as the few curly strands got stuck on his ring. Skylar groaned as loudly as Draco laughed.
"Again?"
Ginny Weasley's voice had stopped the three dancing girls and all attention was now on Draco and Skylar. The girl fidgeted under the attention and Draco squeezed her hand, not minding it at the slightest when she started playing with the Malfoy signet ring.
"Skylar Ophelia Malfoy and Draco Lucius Malfoy," Ginny seemed like an exact replication of her mother as she walked towards the said people, hands on her hips and looking exactly like a furious and disappointed mother would. "I have warned the two of you to never touch the Granger trademark aka extremely curly hair, and yet neither of you listen to me." She took out her wand and muttered some incantations under her breath, waving her wand over the spot of entanglement. "What if her hair gets ruined? A few strands fall down? What if it makes her have extreme hair fall, huh?"
"You are exaggerating," Draco rolled his eyes.
"Snarking instead of accepting his mistakes," Ginny murmured loudly as she stepped back, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking at Draco with narrowed eyes. "So typical of you, Malfoy. So typical."
"Repeating words to exaggerate your point," the blonde man retorted, "extremely typical Weaslette behaviour."
Ginny's reply was just a roll of her eyes.
"Hi dad," Leshia cheered in a gloriously good mood, tackling the man into a big hug. "I missed you! We've had so much fun; you should have been there! Yesterday Grandpa Weasley took us up Glenmoore Hill and we raced all the way back to the burrow on our brooms. It was great! I won!"
"Only because you cheated," Rachel interrupted.
"I did not!" Leshia replied petulantly, poking out her tongue then hiding her face on her father's chest.
"You did cheat, shortie." Skylar's teasing voice came from the stairs. Draco assumed she was transferring their bags to their rooms. "You started before the whistle."
Katie and Rachel were grinning behind their friend's back and the elders laughed as Leshia whined and stomped towards the foot of the stairs, shouting up a:
"No one asked you, you - you-"
And the girl chased her sister upstairs with a cry of war. There were a few screams and shrieks, and the sound of wood hitting the floor reached them, but it was only Katie and Rachel who went upstairs, and that too, to join the 'fun', leaving Ginny and Draco alone.
"You don't look good, Draco."
The said man snorted as he poured water in a glass and offered it to the red-headed woman. "Tell me something I have no idea of."
It was true, though. His skin was pasty and his eyes dark, ringed by even darker and blotchy skin, but not only that, with time only for working, sleeping, washing and on occasion eating, the once fine figure of a man that was Draco Malfoy had withered a little bit. He was thinner, and with no time for exercise his muscles had suffered slight atrophy and had withered away to a certain extent.
Nothing could detract from his dangerous good looks, but he did not hold the awe of women in the street as he once did.
"I'm just worried about you," Ginny sighed. "We all are. You haven't come to the burrow once this year, and the only time we managed to get you to the manor for a party you snuck out after ten minutes." Draco rolled his eyes fondly.
"I'm not exactly welcome at the burrow Ginny, and as for that party? I couldn't help it; I had an important deadline the next day. I did tell you I wouldn't be able to stay long."
"Draco you're always welcome at the Burrow, don't be stupid," Ginny admonished. Yes, Molly was still incredibly suspicious and mistrustful of Draco Malfoy, but he was the father of Hermione's child and had been her husband, so unfortunately, she could not turn him away in good faith.
"Actually there's something I wanted to tell you," Draco began, but he promptly shut his mouth when a clattering of feet on the stairs signified the eminent return of the girls. Ginny frowned at the young man as Leshia and her friends burst into the kitchen.
The blonde man raised an eyebrow at the absence of his first daughter but the shuffling coming from the room upstairs told him that she was cleaning.
"We want to go into town now to get our things for school, mum!" Katie exclaimed with a big grin.
"Yeah, I bet my dad and Uncle Harry are wondering what's happened to us," Rachel added cheerfully.
"Yes, we'll go in a minute girls," Ginny soothed. "Are you okay, Leesh?" Draco looked up sharply at these words to find his daughter staring at the table with a deep frown set into her forehead. After a few moments she looked at him in complete confusion.
"Dad, where's all your stuff?" she asked eventually.
"What stuff?" Draco asked fondly, trying to evade this conversation until he could talk to his daughter in private about his new post later on.
"You know, your work stuff," the young girl repeated.
Since the moment he had accepted the position of teacher at Hogwarts the night before Draco had cleared away all his papers that had normally littered the kitchen table to his study. He hadn't realised what a dramatic difference it made.
As though suddenly realising that yes, the kitchen looked entirely different Ginny abruptly sat up straight and looked around herself.
"My God, you're right!" she exclaimed. "I don't think I've seen the surface of this table in years."
"Don't exaggerate," Draco complained amusedly and he climbed to his feet, ruffling Leshia's hair as he went. "Why didn't you help your sister with the cleaning, missy? Isn't that your room too, huh?"
"She said she can handle it herself very well," Leshia at least looked ashamed. "I'm sorry, I should have helped her-"
Draco chuckled, half at the fact that he had successfully distracted his little interrogator, and half at the nervous rambling. He walked over to the same spot his little trouble was standing on a few minutes ago and called over the stairs. "We're heading to the town, Skylie, leave the cleaning and packing for later!"
"In a minute, dad!"
It took five minutes for Skylar Malfoy to come down the stairs and fifteen minutes after that, the occupants of Malfoy home could be found in front of the Leaky Cauldron door.
"About time!" Ron's exclamation greeted them as soon as the group entered the pub. Him and Harry were sitting in one of the first booths, two glasses of empty Firewhiskey in front of them. "We've been here for ages!"
"Good Godric," Potter gasped, eyes dramatically wide and a hand over his chest, right where his heart was. "Is that Draco Malfoy, I see?"
"Merlin, Harry, it's good we don't have garlic or silver with us or his pale highness would have had to run away," Weasley's reply was equally as dramatic.
Draco rolled his eyes as he nodded at the Wonder Duo in greeting.
"We are going to the Pet Shop first, right, Dad?" Skylar looked up at her father with bright eyes and who was Draco to say no? He, of course, said yes.
"No, Ollivander's first!" Leshia protested, from the other side of Draco.
"Pet shop."
"Ollivander's."
"Pet shop."
"Ollivander's."
"Pet shop."
"Ollivan-"
"Let's get your uniforms, first." Draco announced, shutting the two girls right away. He spied them glowering and giving each other stinky eyes and shook his head tiredly.
"Well well, is it that time already?" Madam Malkin remarked curiously as her eyes roved over Draco's face then to his children's. "Hogwarts, right?"
"If you wouldn't mind," Draco replied coolly.
"Follow me," the woman commanded and she waltzed into the depths of her shop just as Harry, Ginny and Ron led their daughters inside.
"We'll be with you shortly!" came the call.
Leshia had already rushed after the shopkeeper, dragging her unequally, yet excited sister by her hand, leaving Draco to amble after them and by the time he reached the little measuring podiums he himself had stood upon twenty-odd years ago, the girls had already donned the quintessential black Hogwarts robes and Madam Malkin and one of her assistants was making the suitable adjustments.
The sight of his little girls in their robes made Draco's heart ache. Why did they have to grow up?
"How do I look dad?" Leshia asked gleefully, her features so bright and excited they made Draco grin despite himself.
"Short," he chuckled when he saw how far the robes dangled below her ankles, when in truth it was meant to be a knee-length robe.
"Dad!" The girl complained with gleeful laughter.
"What about me?" Skylar asked, bouncing on the balls of her toes, hands clasped in front of her.
"Hmmm," Draco hummed mock-thoughtfully, taking his precious time to answer the question, earning an affronted "Dad!" from his elder girl. He laughed and settled for a, "Definitely not short."
What Draco wanted to say was a "Just like your mother" to both his daughters, but any mention of his wife would lead him to immense pain. A pain which always made you wonder how the situation would be if the absent was present.
Would Draco have still taken the DADA position? Would his girls still grow up by themselves? Would Draco still feel so unbelievably lonely and would every moment feel like death?
The answer to all of his questions was obviously a no.
No, Draco would have stayed at home with his wife, soaking in her warmth.
No, his children did not have to grow too early and learn to take care of themselves like an adult.
Loneliness would never exist with Hermione by his side all the time, chewing his ear off about Runes, and every moment would feel like life. Bright and happy, like sitting in front of a fire when the world around you is frozen from cold.
Soon, the girls were being helped out of the robes for Madam Malkin to pack them in two separate bags.
"Ten Galleons each."
Draco's eyebrows rose high in disbelief but he wordlessly handed the two Galleons to the woman and walked out of the room, prompting the Potters to walk in after them.
"Let's meet at Flourish and Blotts after shopping," were Ginny's parting words before she stepped behind the curtains, not even waiting for a reply.
"The Ollivander's now," Draco announced to his daughters before a fight broke out. Skylar grumbled under her breath as she trudged after an extremely excited Leshia, who was the first one to reach the shop.
The shop was as Draco had remembered it to be. Dusty, dingy, boxes laden with cobwebs and a bit - well, magical.
"Good morning," a quizzical voice came from the shadows between the vast mountains of wand cases. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see another Malfoy in here again, but here we are."
Draco felt his whole body go rigid when the old man's words reached them from his hiding place. Leshia and Skylar had no knowledge of the disgrace he had become in his sixth year at school, and Draco would fight tooth and nail to keep them in the dark over his past evil misdoings. Luckily, Leshia was too awed by the shop and Skylar was too busy preventing her sneezing to care about the mysterious, disembodied voice and what it was actually saying.
"Good morning," Leshia called back hopefully, hoping to lure the shopkeeper out.
"How curious," the old man's voice continued. "So like your mother. Hmmm…we shall have to try…ah, ten inches, vine wood with unicorn hair. Try it."
Without warning, what the Malfoy girls had presumed to be a shadow suddenly burst forth behind the desk and before she could stop herself, Leshia had jumped back into her sister, who bumped into her father.
"Merlin, my nose," the elder girl groaned, rubbing her already red nose, and Draco absent-mindedly rubbed her shoulder, observing the extremely old wand maker.
Mr Ollivander had hardly changed since the day Draco walked into this very shop seeking his first wand. Still grey and wild looking, the old man was an enigma.
He was holding out a wand towards Leshia. The girl stared at it, astonished.
With his other hand that was not trying to ease away his elder daughter's sudden dust allergies, the elder Malfoy lightly nudged his younger one forward, with an amused smile on his face. "Give it a wave, you silly girl."
Leshia seemed to be out of whatever trance she was in. She shook her head and hesitantly took the wand in her hand, gulping heavily and keeping the wooden structure at least an arm's length away from her.
"It's not going to bite you, Leesh." Skylar urged, sniffling through her wet nose. "Just wave it."
As if she was only waiting for her sister's words, Leshia waved the wand jerkily, setting off jets of white-hot energy that hit the ceiling, creating a little rainstorm of plaster chippings.
"No, that won't do."
With this, the old man disappeared into his shelf maze muttering to himself while Leshia placed the wand back on the counter, after which she glanced back nervously to her father.
"I wouldn't worry about it, little one," he told her softly with a small grin. "I broke the front window with one of my attempts." This restored the girl's confidence and she giggled, picturing the pandemonium.
"Try this one," Ollivander's voice came from the gloom and once more he darted into the open behind the counter with a beautiful cream silken box. Very delicately he pulled the lid off and moved aside the felt cloth to reveal a highly polished mid-length wand.
"Eleven inches, chestnut wood complete with a dragon heartstring," Ollivander explained quietly. His beady eyes narrowed as Leshia moved forward to take the wand from his hand, evidently his quick mind going into overdrive over something.
The moment Leshia's fingers closed around the wand Ollivander held out to her, she felt her fingers tingle. A weightlessness spread through her body making her feel giddy, and without having to be guided she swished the wand eliciting a spray of glittering sparkles.
"Excellent," Ollivander exclaimed slowly as he took the wand from the girl's hand and put it into its box. "A very fine wand Miss Malfoy. Temperamental as they come, but capable of great things." Leshia was given the beautiful box to hold.
Skylar was next.
"Ah, another peculiar one," Mr Ollivander muttered as he walked back to one of the shelves and brought three cases back with him. "Here, Ms Malfoy, Walnut wood, twelve inches with a Dragon heartstring core."
The elder Malfoy sibling took the wand and waved it in a circle. She watched with a gaping mouth as a blue light shot out of the wand, hit a wall and vanished in a bunch of small silver stars after creating a big crack on the said wall.
"That's not it, that's not it," Mr Ollivander snatched the wand from Skylar's hand and with a wave of his hand, summoned another wand case to him. Skylar didn't know why, but she had a feeling this would be it.
She was more than happy when her instinct was proven right.
Sparkles shot out of the tip as she clutched the wand in a firm grip, and a sense of rightness flooded through her body, from the tips of her fingers to her toes. Her nose, which was irritating and itching a moment ago, became normal.
"Ten and a quarter inches, black walnut wood and unicorn hair," Mr Ollivander hummed thoughtfully as he packed the wand back in its case. "Never be dishonest, Ms Malfoy. Neither with yourself, nor with the people around you." He told Skylar, as a parting piece of advice.
Draco smiled tightly, giving fourteen galleons to the man and steering his daughters out of the shop.
"That was lucky," he told them cheerfully. "I heard about this boy who went through all the wands in the shop, and by the end of it they still hadn't found the right one for him, so he had to go home and couldn't go."
"Dad! You're lying!" Leshia and Skylar complained happily.
"Me? Would I ever lie to you, my dears?" Draco asked, mocking an affronted expression.
The sisters shared a look and then looked back at their father with matching 'are you seriously asking us that?' expressions on their faces. The man threw his head back in laughter, and walked away from the wand shop.
Draco led his daughters past the pet shop – with great difficulty, in fact, it would be more apt to say that he had to drag Skylar past the pet shop – and into the Cauldron shop where he bought his daughter the pewter cauldrons they needed for their years at school. The girls (one interested in the broom shop and the other in the pet shop) couldn't have been any less interested and they glumly followed their father through to the apothecary to collect the basic ingredients they would need and a set of scales.
When the trio entered the bookshop, the Potters and the Weasleys were already there. Draco watched in barely concealed amusement as his girls ran in different directions. One towards bookshelves, while the other towards her friends.
"You look like you're having fun," came the voice of Ginny, before she appeared moments later, a teasing smile present on her face. Her eyes then landed on Skylar bouncing from one place to another, picking out random books, then keeping them back where she picked them from.
Draco grinned wryly.
"She is scarily like Hermione in her first year," the blonde sensed underlying worry in Ginny's voice. "Harry told me she is worried she would never be able to make friends like Rachel and Kate are to Leshia."
A fist squeezed around Draco's heart, watching his little girl giggle as she read something off the pages of a book, all alone. To say that he was envious of Potter to be able to make Skylar confess one of her fears would be an understatement, but he also understood that it was his fault for never giving his own children his time.
"She said that she didn't feel like she belonged with the trio," Ginny continued when Draco gave her no response. "It felt like being an intruder in a group of tightly knit friends."
Even when Skylar was a toddler, she never parted from her mother, and would cry a river whenever she did not find Hermione beside her and seldomly mingled with people.
Fred and George's children, tricksters like their fathers, had been her favourites at the age of two. Draco remembered the little brunette looking at their tricks while half-hiding her face in her mother's shoulder, and that was the extent of her being in the company of children her age as the girl never left her mother's side.
If he was being honest, Draco would never blame his little girl for it.
Skylar had been nothing but a child of almost one when she was abducted by a Death Eater in order to lure her parents and their friends out. The blonde man could not even imagine the horrors his child had to witness while she was there.
It was Hermione who had led the rescue mission. She was barely breathing when they had found her in a prison cell, surrounded by the severely tortured Order members, in the arms of Luna Lovegood.
"I had never seen Luna so furious," Hermione whispered, her finger tracing Skylar's sleeping face. Her voice choked and she sniffled as the memories of that day came back to her and Draco put an arm around her shoulder, bringing her to his side and kissing her temple. "They made our daughter watch - watch all - all that - tor - torutre-"
She hid her face in his chest as she sobbed.
"We can't blame her now, could we?" The father countered, never straying his eyes away from his daughter. "Those three had always been together like everyone's favourite Golden Trio and bringing another person in a group which only has places for three would definitely make that person feel like an intruder."
"I hope she finds that sense of belonging in Hogwarts," Ginny whispered wistfully and Draco nodded. "Speaking of Hogwarts, what did you want to tell me earlier?"
"About that…" Draco cursed internally, feeling at a loss of words. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I have been offered a position at Hogwarts."
He hoped that the red-head somehow understood his rushed words.
Draco peeked at Ginny. The woman had her mouth hanging open and eyes wide like saucers.
"As a… professor?" She asked.
Draco nodded. "DADA."
"And you accepted it?"
Draco gave her a look.
"Of course you did." Ginny smacked her forehead, piecing everything together. "You said yes to be near Leshia and Skylar and now you are afraid of their reactions?" She laughed, nudging his arm playfully. "The girls worship the ground you walk on, Malfoy. They would be more than glad to have you there with them, both of them."
The words relieved the storm inside the man and he smiled at the woman gratefully.
"I hope you're right."
Leshia, Katie and Rachel slurped at their Milkshakes happily as their parents sat at the neighbouring table with all the packages being flat out ignored. Not that they minded, they were reliving old times, as they often did when they got together. The girls were watching all the youngsters walk past; trying to guess which ones would be in their year. Already they'd seen a nasty looking young man with fine pointy features, being followed about by his short and portly parents. He looked like trouble, and the glare he had cast Leshia had made her feel indignant with anger. What right did a stranger have to glare at her?
"Hey look at that boy," Leshia suddenly laughed and she pointed across the street to where a good-looking young boy was standing awkwardly studying the pets in the window of Magical Menagerie. At his side stood a young bohemian-looking man and a beautiful young woman. All three had an element of dumbfoundedness about them, as though everything they laid their eyes on was new and fascinating.
What surprised Leshia was that the parents of this boy looked even younger than her own father, which she found most odd, as her father had been only twenty when she was born (nineteen when Skylar was born), in a time when a mass baby boom took place, exactly nine months after the end of the War.
"Muggles," Rachel chuckled amusedly.
"It looks like he's going to be in our year," Leshia remarked. "He looks cool."
"He looks strange," Katie cut in with a wrinkled brow. "Look at his hair, it's all blonde and weird."
"What's wrong with blonde hair?" Leshia turned her eyes towards her friend in mock anger.
"Nothing," the bespectacled girl quickly offered shrilly. "Your hair's lovely."
Both Rachel and Leshia started laughing loudly and they didn't stop until their parents climbed to their feet, deigning it the time for the girls' (Skylar's) most anticipated portion of the trip: The Pet shop.
Leshia, Skylar (who had ran towards them as soon as she heard where they were going) Rachel and Katie rushed ahead of their parents to the shop the muggle boy and his parents had gone into, and were now currently looking at rats in.
They took the small shop by storm and within seconds of their having entered it it became awash with excited chatter and a flurry of activity. Leshia headed straight for the cages containing the little kittens, while Skylar, Katie and Rachel had their hearts set on owls. It took Leshia a grand total of two seconds to choose her desired animal companion.
"Ah," the girl exclaimed in shock as something small scrambled up the side of one of the cages and leapt onto her. Dark and silver striped, the fluffy little kitten was absolutely adorable, but what had Leshia so taken with it, was its urge to cause mischief. They were a match made in heaven.
"Dad, I want this one!" The words tumbled from her mouth as she rushed across the room to Draco, who had only just set foot inside the door, having minimised all the other packages in size and putting them in his pockets.
"That one?" He exclaimed with a teasing frown on his face.
Quite unceremoniously he lifted the squirming little kitten from his daughter's arms and raised it to his eye level.
"Yes," Leshia said patiently. "I want that one."
"This little titch?"
"Yes!"
"You're sure?"
"Dad!"
"Wouldn't you rather have a nice toad or something? Or an owl, perhaps?"
"Skylar's buying the owl and none of us is interested in a toad."
Leshia replied, crossing her arms in front of her chest and tapping her foot in sheer indignation.
Draco saw he was pushing it too far and smiled adoringly at the girl, placing the kitten back in her arms. "Go on then, if you must."
The change in the eleven-year-old was instantaneous as a huge smile sprung onto Leshia's pretty face.
"Thank you!" she cheered, before she charged over to the counter with her new cat.
Draco followed entirely amused by his youngest child to pay for the cat, his leather money pouch feeling much lighter than when he had taken it out earlier on.
The muggle family that had walked in ahead of the girls were at the counter paying for a rat the boy had picked.
"Hi," Leshia said boldly to the young boy.
"Hi," he replied with equal vigour.
"Are you a muggle?" the girl asked curiously, managing to overlook the interesting accent the boy spoke with – had she known any better then she might have recognised a pseudo Scandinavian American twang to it.
"A what?" the boy asked with a furrowed brow answering Leshia's question straight away.
"Cool! I've never seen a muggle down Diagon Alley before! You're new at Hogwarts aren't you? So are we, my best friends and me. They're over there. They're buying owls. I tried to tell them not to, but they wouldn't listen. Oh you've got a rat? They're cool too. I definitely think rats and cats are the best, don't you?"
For a moment the boy stood stunned, trying to keep up with everything this confident girl had just spoken.
At the counter the boy's father started chuckling very softly, while his mother tried to suppress her laughter. It wasn't often they saw their son silenced for words, even when he got his letter and they arrived in this strange street the boy kept cool and full of bravado, but the arrival of this charismatic youngster had thrown him off balance.
"Yeah," he merely managed with an embarrassed grin. "I'm Rodeo," he added soon after, trying to think of anything to say that might impress the girl.
"Leshia," she replied happily. "This is my dad," she quickly added when she realised her father was standing behind her and had been for quite some time. Rodeo glanced up at Draco and then instantly wished he hadn't, as he was being stared at quite darkly. "And this is my new cat," Leshia added. "I think I'm going to call him Phillius."
"Right," Rodeo managed. "Um, you're magic then are you?" Leshia frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean, you grew up with magic right?"
"Yes," Draco spoke for the first time, quite firmly. So firmly in fact, that Rodeo's parents turned around and glanced at the man who had spoken so seriously to their son. Upon seeing the stoic expression upon Draco's face they tried to smile at him and nod, but he merely returned the nod before looking away.
"Come on, Rhodes," the muggle man at the counter said cheerfully, with a very strange accent as well. "We've got to go get your, uh, wand."
The man had spoken as though in complete disbelief of the words he was speaking. In fact, it would be quite a while before Rodeo Holsson's father adjusted to the fact that there was such a thing as Magic in the world and that his son was in fact, a wizard. He had rather hoped the boy would follow him into the sport of ice hockey for his profession.
"I'll see you at school," Leshia said happily. "Good luck with choosing your wand. My sister and I got ours on the second go, but my dad told me about this boy that went through all the wands in the shop, but he still didn't find one so he couldn't go to school!"
Draco snorted with laughter despite himself at his daughter's mischief, which earned him a softer look from Rodeo's father. So, this other man was human, well that was nice to know.
"Oh, okay," Rodeo managed, seemingly very worried now about choosing his wand.
"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll get one on your first go," Leshia assured the boy with a big grin.
With this, the muggle family left the shop, allowing Draco to pay for the kitten Leshia had chosen. He and Leshia had to help Skylar in choosing between a tawny and a snowy owl.
"The tawny one," Leshia had decided as soon as she laid her eyes upon the choices and Skylar bought that one even after lamenting her younger sister's ghastly choice for a cat.
("If only she knew about Crookshanks," Ron and Harry sniggered and Draco cracked a smile, remembering Hermione and her furry orange beast)
Both Rachel and Katie had chosen owls and by now everyone was so laden down with packages that they had to call it a day, each flooing their own separate ways from the Leaky Cauldron.
"All packed?" Draco asked Leshia as she came careening down the stairs and into the informal living room – or rather, the 'muggle room' as Draco liked to call it seeing as this was the only room in the house with a television (something both his girls had pleaded with him for) – where the take away food had been deposited by a lazy Draco and eager Skylar.
The sisters adored curries, something they discovered when Tally (the Malfoys' one and only Houself) had taken a bad fall and had been off work for a week meaning Draco had to provide dinner. Having no time to cook they'd experimented with the local muggle take away restaurants and it was thus that Leshia and Skylar discovered their shared love for Indian food.
Every now and then Draco would indulge them.
It was their last night at home before the Hogwarts Express would bear them three to the school, up north and as of yet Leshia and Skylar were still unaware that they would be taking the trip with their father.
Draco had bottled out every single evening this week until now, on the last possible day, he was going to have to tell his daughters his secret. He could tell they were a bit suspicious (he saw the questioning looks passed to each other), as he had spent more time with them in the last few days than in the last half year combined, and Tally had started packing a trunk for Draco in plain view of the girls.
Leshia was quite easily fooled by Draco explaining that Tally was going slightly senile and the stupid elf believed him to be going to school and not the girl, but Skylar's words of "That's ridiculous" had watered the seed of suspicion in her heart.
Skylar wordlessly motioned for her younger sister to take the remote, eating her portion of the naan bread and shaking her head in a no when Leshia asked her if there was something specific she wanted to watch.
"Oh I love this programme," Leshia said excitedly as one of those awful muggle cartoons came on the television about a dysfunctional family in America.
Draco was entirely sure he shouldn't let his daughter watch such a dreadful muggle contraption, but it had proved so useful in the past whenever he had to work and had no time for her. Besides, up until now Leshia and Skylar had been attending a muggle school to keep their occupied during the days when Draco worked, and Leshia, the over-friendly and chatty child that she was, had argued that she and Skylar had to appear to be normal to their muggle classmates, and keeping up to date with the latest television programmes was apparently central to this plan.
Whatever the programme was, his elder daughter did not seem interested in watching it.
"Are you two all packed?" Draco repeated when he hadn't had a word out of the girls. They nodded wordlessly. "Everything? You can't turn the train around if you find you forgot something you know."
Leshia grinned while Skylar gave him a mere thumbs up.
The girl rarely spoke while eating food and Draco appreciated that habit of hers a lot.
"I know," she managed through a mouthful of food, ignoring Draco's "swallow your bite first".
"Hey, dad?" Skylar asked a few moments later. The girl had finished her food and was waiting for Leshia to finish it to keep the dishes away.
"Hmm?"
"Were you worried about what house you were going to be sorted into when you went to school?" the girl asked curiously.
"No," he replied truthfully. "I knew I was going into Slytherin."
"How?" It was Leshia who asked this time.
"I just did." Draco shrugged. "Everyone in my family had always been in Slytherin."
Leshia seemed incredibly downhearted about this.
"What's wrong?" Skylar bumped the younger's shoulder playfully.
"I don't want to be in Slytherin," the girl said softly. "But if everyone in our family always went into Slytherin, and if dad did…then I might too."
"And what if I get sorted into Slytherin?" Skylar countered, an eyebrow raising in question.
The question made even Draco roll his eyes. Skylar was anything but a Slytherin. A Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff, most probably, or even a Ravenclaw, but never a Slytherin.
"No offence, love, but you are not the Slytherin extent of cunning and ambitious." Draco answered. "Besides, your mother was in Gryffindor, and none of you are as horrid as me at the age of eleven, so there is a highly likely chance the two of you won't be sorted into the house of snakes."
The girls giggled at that.
"Actually," Draco said worriedly, and the tone of his voice caused the giggles to cease and face him; Draco so rarely faltered. "There was something I wanted to talk to you two about…something about school."
Leshia stayed silent while Skylar nodded encouragingly, and looking at their eyes, Draco knew they were aware something like this was coming.
"See, your letter, well, it didn't come in the post, but Albus Dumbledore, your new Headmaster, dropped it off personally." The sisters still remained silent. "He did that, because he wanted to talk to me about something. He…"
Draco trailed off and rubbed the ash blonde bristles on the back of his head anxiously.
"He what?" Leshia asked seriously when her father remained silent.
"He offered me a job, Leshia, and I said yes."
For a moment, the two girls stared at their father, before very slowly they looked at each other in thought, nodded, then looked back at Draco simultaneously.
"That means you're also going to school tomorrow with us?"
"I'm afraid so."
Leshia clutched Skylar's hand and drew circles on her palm, thinking, as that was the only thing she could do. When she couldn't reach a conclusion, she tapped a pattern on her sister's palm, eager to know her thoughts.
Skylar had learnt the code language from a book, teaching it to her sister for emergencies.
The elder Malfoy sibling gripped her sister's anxious arm, and squeezed it reassuringly, tapping her elbow in a pattern.
Leshia looked up at Skylar's neutral expression, and the elder girl nodded.
"What are you two talking silently about?" Draco's voice was audibly nervous, and it made the girls burst into laughter, leaning into each other for support before Leshia jumped to hug her father, rocking them back and forth in joy.
Draco laughed, hugging her back and reached out to ruffle Skylar's head with his rings-free hand.
"Can we go pack your trunk?" Leshia asked excitedly as she bounced up onto her feet again, an equally excited Skylar standing beside her and looking up at him with shining eyes.
Laughing, Draco indulged the girls and followed them up to his room where they started throwing his clothes around willy-nilly, aiming for his trunk and inevitably always missing, and almost tearing his shirts while arguing over which shirt would be better to pack.
He couldn't even muster the negative emotion to get cross with them.
I am a huge fan of the Generstions series, and it's weird but i kinda wrote ff of an ff and here i am with my oc inserted in the generations world. I hope you all like it and just a reminder, that this will be mostly different from the original one and i do want to to complete the whole series.