Chapter Title: Chapter 76 Part TWO
Author's Notes: First off, thank you to Arnel for beta'ing!

Thank you to everyone who leaves a review. Thank you to those who have bought a book or supported me on patre on (I have to spell that wrong or it gets flagged).

I am traveling the next several weeks on a trip I have desperately wanted to take for many years now, and some of it involves crossing over into Canada where I may or may not have internet. I'll write, but I may not be able to post until I'm back Oct 1st. I'm just not sure! But I'll have something for you then, if not before. I'll try for before.

Let me know what you think
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

"I'm home," Teddy called out and heard various shrieks and screams as three little girls ran pell-mell for him, grappling onto his legs as he continued to walk towards the kitchen where he could smell dinner cooking. "I have little badgers hanging off my legs," he growled down as his girls who giggled and clung tighter to him. "Hi, luv," he said as he walked over to Victoire who was seated at the counter writing on some parchment. It wasn't actually hard to walk with the girls hanging off of him, but he made sure to give it a good grunt to send them off into more giggle fits. He bent and kissed his wife's cheek and then her mouth when she turned her head to smile up at him. "How are you doing?" he asked, rubbing his hand along the swell of her belly.

"Mostly fine," she said with a long sigh as she leaned her head against his chest. "Nap time today was not as long as I wanted."

"Who didn't want to sleep?" Teddy asked, glancing down at his girls. Immediately all three raised a hand to indicate they didn't want a nap as they giggled uproariously. "Mhmm," he mumbled as he tried not to smile at their impishness. "Do you want to nap now?"

"No," Victoire assured him as she picked up her quill and continued to write. "I have a report due for work tomorrow, though, so keep them occupied while I finish it."

"I can do that," Teddy promised as he glanced over to Teeny who was preparing dinner. The dynamic in their home had changed a lot over the last year. Teeny had, at one time, been Emma's playmate and friend. While Teeny would still play with the girls, she was now a full-grown elf and didn't want to be playing all the time. She wanted to work. She liked to work and when she'd asked if she could come and work for them, he'd been a little concerned with how it was going to go.

He wished she could have had a different life, but ultimately Teeny had chosen what she'd wanted. She willingly accepted a salary from them of one galleon a week, which was absolutely terrible and very low, but she wouldn't take more. On the flip side, she took off to see her mother and new brother when she wanted and she regularly went to work other places as the mood struck her. It was working out but it had been working out informally for the last year.

Right around when Emma turned three, Teeny had started to help with the household chores and she'd also started to help with the cooking. She'd wanted to help. She'd also started teaching Emma how to do small things, which worked out beautifully for them. Emma and the twins were now doing simple chores around the house that they were happy to do because it was Teeny asking, now Mummy and Daddy.

"Do you need any help, Teeny?" Teddy asked the elf as she continued on with dinner.

"Nope," Teeny asked with a cheerful wave. "I am on track."

Another thing that was heartening about Teeny was her lack of formality. She wasn't bothered with it the way her mother was. It was good to see. He hoped, at some point, she'd accept more pay for her work but as she told them, she didn't need much and they provided whatever she did need, so more money wouldn't be helpful.

"Alright you three," Teddy said as he reached down and scooped them all up into his arms. "Out we go!"

He was outside with them for only five minutes before Harry came through the back door. After the initial round of, "Granddad!" that required hugs and attention, the girls went back to playing with only occasionally calling out for them to watch.

"Any news?" Teddy asked his father as he watched the girls.

"It's not good," Harry told him seriously. "I've had word that they've lost at least a dozen of their Aurors."

Teddy's heart sunk as he took it in. He knew a lot of the Aurors from around the world, simply because there weren't that many of them. In total there were likely only two or three thousand Aurors worldwide, so they were generally a tightknit group. "Any word on what happened?"

"It was a fanatical faction from Saudi Arabia," Harry said with absolute disgust. "You know they have that weird relationship between the Muggle governments, right?"

"Yeah," Teddy confirmed with a nod. "The Muggles want their oil so they play nice with the government, which is essentially a terrorist dictatorship pretending to be a monarchy."

"Close enough," Harry agreed as his mouth twisted into a grimace. "They've been having some squabbles recently because of the fact that they keep sending their most radical citizens out of the country. Apparently, that's not limited to their Muggle radicals and they deported about forty psychopath wizards to America and Canada. They formed a new terrorist group that we're only now hearing about because the wizards didn't know about them and their Muggle FBI didn't bother to share it."

Teddy's brain had to process the FBI part, but he knew of them, of course. They were a Muggle version of the Aurors and in America they were supposed to share the information between the Muggle and Magical agencies, just as they were in Britain. Unfortunately, no law enforcement agency did well at sharing, the Aurors included. "So, the FBI knew about them and didn't say anything?"

"They knew about them for two years and didn't say a word," Harry told him bitterly. "They might have a hundred people dead because they didn't say anything."

Teddy closed his eyes and shook his head. It was one thing to be careful with one's information, but it was another to keep secrets so closely that people ended up dead. "Damn it."

"I'm not sending you," Harry told him flatly, "But I want you sitting in on my decision process."

Teddy opened his eyes and turned to study Harry more closely. "Why, what's up?"

Harry let out a long, slow breath. "Right now, you're in the thick of raising young children, but look at our Auror force."

Teddy let his raised brow be his answer. He didn't know what Harry was getting at.

"We have plenty of people who are in their fifties and sixties, and many who are older than that," Harry pointed out to him. "My plan is to stick with the Aurors for another twenty or thirty years," he said without inflection. "That's the plan, and currently it's what the British magical community wants."

"I hear a 'but' coming from you," Teddy said slowly, not sure he wanted to know where it was coming from.

"But," Harry said on a long sigh as he glanced over to the kids, "I need a successor. The only two who are in the age between you and me have both turned me down. I didn't consider either of them a strong candidate to be the Head Auror, as neither has the temperament for it, but since I don't have the temperament for it, either, I didn't want to exclude them. They both said no. They value being able to leave work at work."

"I value being able to leave work at work," Teddy reminded him as he pointed to the girls. "I have them to consider." Then he shut his mouth because he knew Harry had been put in the same position. He'd had to consider not only Teddy, but James, Al, and Lily, as well. "It's not my goal to take your job. Don't you think Al might want it?"

"I don't know what Al might want," Harry admitted honestly. "I haven't spoken to him about it because I can't yet see if he or Lena will be solid Aurors. Right now, they're both acceptable in their training. If they keep on their course, they'll end up being fine Aurors who don't stand out. Maybe that might mean one or both of them will have the temperament to take control and be the Head Auror in all its political glory, but right now I don't even know that they will make it through. You've made it through and you're much better than an adequate Auror."

Teddy heaved out a long sigh as he considered his options. He was committing to being the Head Auror. He wasn't even committing to more work as an Auror. If he read it correctly, Harry simply wanted him to shadow Harry so he'd have a good idea of what it took to be the Head Auror. "Are you concerned you won't be able to finish out to retirement?"

"At this point, anything can happen," Harry reminded him darkly. "We didn't lose the Head Auror in America, but we came very close to it. He was feet away from someone who did die. If something happens to me, there needs to be someone who can step in. There are a few older Aurors who can do so and they would if needs be, but they have all said that it should be in the hands of someone younger and frankly all of them have faith in you."

"All of them?" Teddy asked him, very skeptically.

"All of them," Harry returned seriously which gave Teddy a moment of pause. "All of them know you have a lot on your plate with having a young family, and none of them want you to have the job now, but in twenty years when your children are all grown, that's a different story. Merlin's beard, I don't want it to come to it, but I would be foolish to not plan ahead. Right now, you're my top choice. If we have a super-star come along in the next few years, I know you'll be ready to step back and let them take the lead."

Harry was right about that. Teddy didn't have his own ego as forefront when it came to his job. He liked his job and he felt like he was good at it, and a solid asset to the team, but he'd never wanted to rise up the ranks so far that he would have a target placed on him. "I'll shadow you for a while," Teddy said finally. "I'll see what it means to have the job and, in a few months, I'll let you know if I feel like it's the right fit for me. That's the best I can do right now."

"It's all I'm asking," Harry assured him with a long sigh. "Come give Granddad a hug, girls," he called out to the children. "We'll have them over for a sleep over sometime," he told Teddy. "Let you and Victoire have a night off soon."

~*~

Lily hadn't planned out much of her life, at least not until that point. She'd been going along with the natural rhythm of school and accomplishing what she could there. She tried to pick a career path because it was what was expected of her, even though she never really had a solid lead on what she would have liked to do. At first, she'd thought about running a restaurant, but when she'd seriously looked into how much time and effort it would take, she'd quickly realized that she wouldn't have a life outside of running the restaurant and that wasn't what she'd wanted with her life. Then she'd considered charity work, and she still thought that would be the best use of her time. She could devote as much, or as little, time as she wanted to projects she felt would be worthwhile and pass on anything that didn't strike her as something she would be good at accomplishing.

She hadn't seriously considered a job with the Ministry or in a shop. She didn't know what else she might want to do with her life. Rose was happy as could be with her job training to be a potions master and there was no doubt in Lily's mind that Rose would be good at it. Honor was seriously considering a job with the Ministry. Hugo had opted to work with his dad and uncle in the joke shop once he was done with school.

Lily was having a baby and not a career.

She glanced down at her small belly and then back out at the late morning sky which she could watch every morning from the back garden solarium. It was her favorite room in the house, or at least it was for now. She rather expected the baby's room to get first pick when she was done, but for now it was still a work in progress.

When everything had happened at Rose's wedding, Lily had struggled to process all the changes in her life. She'd been married to Scorpius only a few hours after the trauma and the bond between them had been… powerful. It had been a driving factor in what had happened, often, over the week following their nuptials. She'd never truthfully considered sex before it had happened, and then it had and she'd had to come to grips with what it meant. Learning her child was actually Scorpius' child, as well, had been such a relief to her. She'd desperately hoped it would be so, but she'd been preparing herself for it to be someone else's. He'd married her to save her. In the end, though, she liked to think their love won out.

Now they were married and had been for months at this point. They were still getting used to living together, to living in this big house that her inheritance money had paid for, and to the changes that were soon to come their way. For a while, Lily had been worried she'd miscarry like her mother had, but Nat had promised Lily many times that Lily was completely healthy and had no lingering side effects from her brief kidnapping.

At least, she didn't have any physical side effects. She definitely had some mental ones. She didn't remember any of what had happened to her, but waking up in the way she had… well, it left scars. Lily rubbed at her small stomach and tried to put the pieces together in her brain in a way that could make sense to anyone, but she knew it didn't even make sense to her. She was so happy about the baby. She was happy being married to Scorpius. She was happy to be out of the school which was nothing but stress to her.

Yes, she was still desperately sad and felt like something had been stolen from her. She wanted, very much, to go back and try to redo what had happened, but at the same time she didn't because she didn't want to lose what she had now. All she could do was move forward and hope things would even out.

Her mother had arranged for therapy for Lily. A therapist came every week, sometimes twice a week, to the house and talked to Lily about what she was feeling and how she was coping. The therapist gave her tips on how to deal with her empathy and her levels of anxiety. She talked about eating right, getting exercise, and always communicating with her family.

It was helping. Lily could see it was helping, but it felt like the progress was so slow. Still, it was progress.

She was having a girl. They'd only found out a few days before but both she and Scorpius were very happy with news. Lily had cried. She would have cried over learning they were having a boy, as well, but she was so happy. Her parents were thrilled, even though they had many granddaughters already. She still didn't know what Caroline's baby was, but if she had to guess she suspected it was a boy. Time would tell, as Nat was keeping quiet on what the baby was.

So far, they were considering the name Lorelei.

Sera, who was laying at her feet, nudged her ankle with her nose. "Yeah," she said to the dog absently. "I like the name, too."

They were building their dream one brick at a time. Their home was essentially done. They were starting their family. Lily had decided that she was going to raise their children for a while and then maybe do something else later. Scorpius was going to be in for a large pay rise just after the baby was born. But they would be fine until then. The money her parents had set aside had been more than enough to buy and redo the house and they could comfortably live off of Scorpius' pay with one child. After he was done with his training, he would earn considerably more and she wouldn't need a job. They were blessed in a way that a lot of families weren't. She didn't have to get a job.

The only sour note in their lives was Scorpius' parents. His mother had been happy at the news of a granddaughter, but his father was less than thrilled. He'd hid it enough so that they didn't have to talk about it, but Lily had sensed it and when Scorpius had asked her, she'd had to tell him that Draco hadn't been pleased to hear the baby was a girl.

He wanted one grandson to carry on the name and not dilute the fortune, which was hysterical since they'd lost most of their fortune a long time ago. There was nothing to dilute.

Lily wanted many children. She liked the way that Teddy and Victoire's family worked. She wanted that for herself, except she didn't want the pressure or demands that Victoire had to still work some to continue to be a Healer. Oh, it worked for Victoire, but it wasn't going to work for Lily.

She had her own ideas about her own path and she was done trying to please anyone else and do what was expected of her. She was going to do what was best for her and her family and anything else would have to fall away.