Chapter Title: Chapter 86 Part TWO
Author's Notes: Thank you for joining me on patreo n! I really appreciate it. You can find me there at Sarah Jaune and you get access to ALL of my original works as well as a new chapter every two weeks.

You can also follow me at the same name on the book of Face lol

We are closing in on the finish of this story and I'm not sure I'll write more fanfics any time soon, so if you want to keep up with me, please check out either of those options.

Thank you Arnel for beta'ing!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Nat shifted silently under the cloak while Teddy led in another woman to be healed. She'd been married almost a month now and they had a house they'd moved into the day before and she was definitely feeling the exhaustion, even though she hadn't had to move anything. She'd been there to tell all the men where she wanted everything, though, and she'd needed to set up the kitchen and get clothes put away and… Ginny and Gran and Hermione and Fleur and several other women had been there to help, but she was still really tired.

Al had picked her up and carried her off to bed to stop her from trying to organize everything.

She had a house. She had a home and it was all hers and Al's and she didn't ever have to move if she didn't want to. She was going to be able to stay in one place! It felt like everything should just be put away and maybe then it would feel real and permanent.

Nat knew she was being ridiculous, but she couldn't help it. She didn't even have a workshop set up at the new house to make wands and it didn't much matter because she'd made so many that Ollivander couldn't take anymore. She still wasn't totally sure how she'd managed to make so many wands while she was healing the women and the babies, but it likely had to do with how isolated she'd felt and how miserable she was not having Al in her life.

She'd done that to herself, of course. She had encouraged him to find someone, anyone, just so she could stop wondering when he finally would. She still couldn't believe he wanted her. It still seemed like a dream that he loved her. He told her all the time. He showed her. He definitely wanted her. She blushed hard, something she was trying to stop doing, as she remembered last night when he'd…

Yes, he definitely wanted her. She just didn't understand why.

"She's ready," Audrey said quietly and Nat moved over to the woman to heal her.

It was like this all the time, all these women and their poor babies. This one was… wait… Nat stared at the baby, unsure of how… "Is she Muggle-born?"

"No," Audrey answered immediately. "She's a witch from Canada, why?"

"The baby isn't biologically hers," Nat told Audrey. "It just threw me off for a minute."

"Wait, what does that mean?" Teddy asked as Nat started pulling the poison from the woman.

"It means the baby isn't related to the mum," Nat explained. "She used someone else's egg to have this baby."

Teddy shot them both an alarmed look. "How on earth would someone do that?"

Nat listened to Audrey's explanation, gave a little clarification, then declared them both to be healed. "That baby isn't going to look anything like her," Nat said to Audrey before they woke the woman. "It's going to be a shock."

"That isn't ours to deal with," Audrey reminded her. "You heal them. That's all you can do."

She knew it was true, but it still weighed on her for a bit. Generally, people wanted biological children and she understood why. It was a hardwired evolutionary instinct to pass on one's genes to the next generation. But she and Al weren't going to be able to do that and although she was alright not passing on her DNA, she did regret not passing on his.

And she wanted to be pregnant. She hated to admit it, since there was nothing she could do about it, but it was an experience she desperately wanted to have.

She glanced over to the door when it opened and saw Al slip in, closing it behind him. "Are you swapping out for Teddy?" Audrey asked her nephew.

"I am," Al agreed with a small smile. "Nat was exhausted last night, so I told Teddy I wanted to take the second shift here so I could get her home as soon as she's done."

"I'm alright," Nat said from beneath the cloak.

He grinned in her direction. "You're better than alright, but that doesn't mean you aren't tired. There's another six women and then we are going home."

He led her from the secured room in the back of the Auror's office two hours later and she had to admit she was dragging. He seemed to sense it, because he kept his pace slow and even as he walked towards his father's office. As soon as he had them in the office and he'd greeted his father, he sealed the door, he reached for the cloak and pulled it off. "Oh, Leah," he sighed as he studied her exhausted eyes. He didn't say more, but swept her into his arms. She didn't protest as she pressed her face into his neck. "Let's get you home and into bed."

"You don't need to come back," Harry told him, his concerned green eyes, just like his son's, met hers.

"I have some things to finish, but I'll get her settled first and then come back here. Polly should be moved into the house now and she will have something ready for her to eat."

He carried her through the Floo, something he'd become adept at doing recently, and took her straight upstairs to their room.

Everything was put away Nat saw as he set her on the bed and knelt to remove her shoes. She wanted to tell him she could manage, but she wasn't sure she could. "I'm going to nap while you're gone," she said around a yawn.

"Eat this first," he said as he pulled a jerky stick from the drawer of the table next to the bed. He propped himself over her, watching her as she slowly chewed, and then he pressed his lips to her forehead. "You're perfect."

She let out a snort.

"Absolutely perfect," he repeated again as he nibbled his way down the side of her neck to her collarbone. "We'll talk about how perfect in more details later. If you need something, call for Polly." He leveled his gaze on hers. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she whispered and then popped the last bite into her mouth, grinning as she chewed. He kissed her quickly and then left the room.

She was asleep soon after she swallowed the last bite.

He insisted they eat in bed with trays. "It's our house, we can do what we want to," he said when she claimed she could get up. "Plus, the house is too big. We'd have to walk for ages to get down to the kitchen."

"It's not that big," she retorted mildly. "Lily's house is too big."

"True," Al agreed as he settled next to her, both of them propped up with pillows against the headboard as they dug into roasted lamb. "But still, six bedrooms…" he grinned over at her. "We'll have to fill those rooms."

"That could take a while," she reminded him. Maybe she was reminding herself. Maybe she was consoling herself.

She felt his fingers on her cheek and she glanced over to see him studying her. "It will happen, though," he told her quietly.

There would be babies who needed to be adopted at some point. There might be older children, as well, but that was rare, thankfully, since it was harder for older children to lose their parents.

As much as she wanted children, she also knew she was getting children that others had to give up for whatever reason, and that was always difficult and painful. But that's how adoption went… it was a mixed bag of good and bad, like a lot of things in life.

"I know you wish you could be pregnant."

Nat's eyes flew back to his. She did want it, very, very badly. "I don't want to miscarry."

"I don't want that, either," he agreed quietly. "I know what it did to my mother. I don't want us to have to go through that."

They were being very, very careful. The spell had to be cast once every twenty-four hours to be effective. Al cast it on her every morning at the exact same time, sometimes when she wasn't even awake if she'd had a rough night the night before.

Sometimes she wished he would forget, but then she'd remember Hope's grave and she knew she didn't want that. Maybe things could be okay, but if they weren't she and Al would be destroyed and she didn't want to deal with that level of grief.

So, they would wait until the moment was right and then they'd adopt. They had their last interview set up for the following day, at the Ministry, but it was a formality at this point. If a baby was born who needed a home and the other parents didn't want the baby, she and Al could be asked.

An owl pecked at the window.

Nat glanced over to see it and recognized Hermione's owl. Al must have realized the same because he went to retrieve the scroll tied there. "Thanks," he told the owl who took off immediately. Al closed and secured the window and brought the scroll over to her. "It's for you."

Nat opened it and scanned through it quickly, then paused as she studied the very detailed diagram of her family tree. It went back five generations and she slowly went through and scanned all of them until she saw a name at the bottom, many lines over from her, but still there.

Five generations back…

"Does… does that say you and Rick are related?" Al asked her carefully as he read over her shoulder.

"Very distantly, but yeah," Nat confirmed as she ran her thumb over his name and then back to her own name, which was now joined up with Al's. "You aunt dug back and found this? Why would she do that?"

"It's the sort of thing that would stick with her," Al told her with a laugh. "She'd see two very rare magical powers that are passed down in one family and she'd want to know how two unrelated people could have them. You'd be a puzzle and she's never been good at letting things like that go."

Nat considered the family tree and saw how few forks were on her parents' lines. In this case, it was her mother's side of the family. "I'm so glad you have a big family."

"We have a big family," he reminded her. "You're part of it, and we're going to do our part to make it even bigger."

She really, really hoped it was right.

~*~

Rick found his distant relationship with Nat to be very funny. Harry had been the one to tell him about Hermione's research and he'd laughed for a solid minute. "Seriously, what were the odds we'd both have this magical ability show up? I haven't had any of it in my family and she's only had it once in the family since before our ancestors split? But it happens now, and basically within a year of each other being born? It's crazy."

It was definitely something to consider and even more interesting, as far as Hermione could figure out, Rick wasn't related to Dumbledore in any form, which meant going back twenty generations.

But he didn't have much time to consider any of this as they were still dealing with the death of the rogue Quidditch player and the levels she'd gone to try to get into his family.

She'd been pestering James for years, which Caroline confirmed, as she had a good recollection of all the times James talked about her, but James also admitted he might not have always told Caroline everything as he often tried to push it away or forget what happened.

The Daily Prophet was having a field day with this, skirting around accusing James of cheating on his wife, but staying just inside the line of keeping everything above board. James and Caroline had been forced to come into the Ministry to have their soul bond examined and it was determined that it was as it should be, magically speaking.

Harry had no doubt that his son had been faithful to his wife. James had begged Harry to take him to cheerleading competitions when James had been sixteen or so.

In a casual relationship, that was not something a boy would willingly do. Then again, the competitions had proved to be amazing and they'd all gone to several after that.

But the Ministry took soul bonds seriously and he'd hated that he'd been forced to drag them both in to have it checked. Ginny had stayed with their grandsons, Alex and Asher, while they were gone, something his wife loved doing, but she was spitting mad that they'd accused James of being unfaithful.

Caroline had been nervous going into the Ministry, since it was done in public and everyone knew why she was going in with James. It was a mess.

Nat's reaction to the whole thing was to roll her eyes. "I can see when that happens. It hasn't." But of course they couldn't say that to anyone but the Minister and it hadn't been the Minister making the call. It was some upper-level bureaucrat whom Harry barely knew, which Hermione had claimed was the problem. Harry hadn't bothered to learn the bloke's name and kiss his arse, so the man had targeted Harry's son.

It was so typical.

Rick had told Harry the same thing about magical bonds. "You can see when they've been messed with," he told Harry. "I don't see much of it here in England, because you punish people harshly, but in America it's maybe one in every ten couples. The magic flowing between them is mangled, depending on what's gone wrong."

At the end of a very, very long day Harry had gone to Lily's house and he'd hugged his baby girl for a long time, letting her essence sooth him in her very Lily way.

"You look tired, Daddy," she told him as she gazed up at him, taking in his every feature.

"So do you," he commented as he saw the bags under her eyes.

Scorpius came down the stairs with the baby, her coppery hair a cap that would soon only be matched in brilliance by the turning of the autumn leaves. Her hair was baby fine and curled gently around her face, but it was her eyes, which had melded into Scorpius' silvery-blue which fixed on him. She looked so, so serious. She often did.

Lorelei's cousin, Ireland, was only a little older, same for Asher, and both babies smiled and giggled all the time now. Lorelei's expression was already one of someone who had seen too much.

"Come here, my darling," Harry whispered as he took the tiny girl and met her stare directly on. Silently, he promised her that he was going to make sure she didn't have to see too much… to know too much.

But of course, he knew he couldn't promise that. He didn't have any control over what was going to happen to them. Lorelei was a miracle already. She wasn't what Crabbe had wanted her to be and Harry was certain that through his youngest grandchild he'd been given the key to ending Crabbe.

Naturally, it was a prophecy and thus incomprehensible until it was all over. Such was the plague of Harry's life.

But none of that was Lorelei's fault and Merlin, did he wish he could ease the worry he already saw in her young eyes.

They were nearing September and another school year. Hugo and Honor were finished with school, and they wouldn't have anyone else in the family in Hogwarts for a few years yet.

Audrey's Patronus, a large dove, soared into Lily's living room and spoke. "Harry, I need you at the hospital. Someone dropped off a baby."

~*~

"Madame…"

Isabella Crabbe glanced over to the young man standing in the doorway of her office, although truth be told it wasn't much of an office. They had to keep moving in order to not be caught and it was getting exhausting.

She was currently in a posh hotel in Sri Lanka but they would need to leave for Ghana in a few days. She had contacts there and resources, ones which could hide her for a while.

She'd planned so many, many things, but few had worked out. She'd bamboozled that idiot Anthony Bugatti to get access to his Muggle pharmaceutical company, only to realize too late her niece was married to the idiot. She'd tried to silence Daphne, but Potter had intercepted the idiot before he could do any harm.

She didn't know if he was dead, not officially as Potter hadn't released anything, but she did hope she caused them more than a little trouble with the curse she'd leveled on the moron.

Sadly, she'd not managed to siphon much money from him before she'd lost control of Bugatti.

Realizing she'd ignored the young man standing in her door, she glared at him and asked, "Yes?"

"There's news of one of the Potter children," he said as he came forward with a newspaper.

Crabbe scanned it quickly and saw it was an announcement that Albus Potter had married Natalie Parker.

Parker… Parker… then it hit her. Curtis Parker, the odious Muggle who helped identify that she wasn't dead. She'd once had Natalie kidnapped when she'd been with her father in Brasília, but the Brazilian Aurors had managed a rescue before she could get there to claim her prize. Her underlings had been forced to scatter when they realized the Ministry was breathing down their necks. She'd tried also to have her snatched from Diagon Alley, but the attempt had failed and she'd given it up as a waste of resources.

While she wanted revenge on Curtis Parker for his part in uncovering her faked death, it wasn't worth the price.

Now, however, she had a lot of money thanks to her manufactured pandemic and vaccines, even if the new vaccines were harmless to the Muggles. Maybe she could try again for Natalie. It would hurt one of Potter's children and it would be revenge on Curtis Parker.

Maybe she'd have the same Peruvian demolition curse put on the girl. That would be great fun to send her home with it. Maybe she'd survive… maybe Bugatti had survived… but maybe she wouldn't and that would also be excellent.

"Thank you," she said as she studied the paper. She glanced to the mirror and saw her reflection. She was sixty-two years old now, but thanks to some magical concoctions, she didn't look a day over thirty.

She had learned a lot things from many people in her years of travel. She'd learned how to heal damages left by her wretched husband and halt the ravages of time.

She would be young and healthy enough to see this through, even if it took another two hundred years. Some day she would have her revenge.