As the Hogwarts Express departed from the secret platform at King's Cross station, Harry felt a sense of foreboding. The cool breeze blowing through the station did nothing to alleviate the sinking sense of dread in his stomach, and neither did the crowd of people watching him from a less than respectful distance.
"There goes our last summer as free people."
"Don't be so melodramatic," Harry shot back at his wife, even though he felt the same way. "Remember, we can always repay Andi by dumping the kids on her and disappearing for a holiday."
"Well, at least we had the trial run," she replied, and even after fifteen years, he couldn't help but smile at the nickname Dora had picked for her much younger sisters Sagitta and Vulpecula as well as Sirius' daughter Carina.
"Nymphadora, do not refer to your sisters like that," her mother cut in as if she had been summoned.
"You mean my pseudo daughters?"
"And whose fault is that?" Andromeda asked pointedly.
"I am magically incapable of conceiving a child, and will still be for the next two months," Dora replied and Harry winced at the thought that suddenly, it was socially acceptable to talk about the fact that he was creampie-ing his wife. Even with her parents. Well, not that this would be a new state of affairs, but no matter how close he had grown to his family, discussing sex with them was a bridge too far. At least sober, and even then only with Sirius.
"You wanted that clause in that contract," Andromeda pointed out.
"May I remind you that I drank my way through two bottles of Firewhisky, and your cousin was part of the whole mess, too."
"Sirius has given me a grandchild to spoil, unlike you. And a niece."
"Delphi isn't your granddaughter," Dora shot back, and Harry helplessly looked around. His godfather and father-in-law had wisely sounded the retreat and probably went straight to Michael's shed to have a few beers under the disguise of tinkering on some flying car or something. Cowards. But given the impending storm, he had to admit that daytime drinking suddenly seemed very appealing. "And if she counts as one, then my sisters count as my children, too."
Absurd arguments were the name of the game in the Tonks' household, but talk of children had the potential to become ugly. Years ago, that stupid hat put him into Gryffindor for a reason, and so Harry stepped in before the argument really got out of hand. Even if he could hear a lager calling out for him. "Mum, even you have to admit that Delphi is more akin to a fourth daughter to you than a granddaughter. Even if, on paper, Sirius adopted her, that was only to give her a plausible origin story. She has been living in Dora's old room. And from what you have said, she acts like Dora, too."
"So you are saying that she is my daughter, or would be if I got knocked up at Hogwarts."
"Unless you were a teacher, there is no way you could have been knocked up at Hogwarts, aged 25," Andromeda pointed out dryly.
"Oh believe me, there were plenty of opportunities for that to happen," Tonks shot back, and Harry felt the pint with his name on shift into a bottle of noon Vodka. But as the memories of their not-so-secret get-togethers came back, the room suddenly felt quite warm.
"And yet, nothing happened."
"Because Harry was barely a man grown, traumatised by whatever Dumbledore had been playing. That clause helped him, because he needed some time and peace to get over that, not a child wh–"
Dora was cut off by his lips on her own, and she closed her eyes as she felt the tension melt away.
"We have a table in Ashford waiting for us," Harry explained to his mother-in-law before he side-alonged his wife out of the hidden platform.
"So what are we going to do for the two hours before the Taste opens?" Dora asked as she untangled herself from him and looked across the familiar loading ramp. The Sainsbury it belonged to had been remodelled since their double date with the dementors, but the back road had not changed. It made for a prime apparation spot, even if it looked like they were coming back from a quick shag in between the rubbish bins. Which, admittedly, they also had done a few times. "What elaborate date have you planned?"
"Nothing. I just wanted to get you away before you both got into a shouting match. Those are never fun," he shrugged as they stepped on the main toad. "And we haven't been to our restaurant this month."
"Today is the First," Dora deadpanned, and Harry poked her side in response. She might be the Head of the Auror Academy, but Harry knew where she was ticklish.
"Well, we had gyros yesterday and you made pizza on Wednesday. So Indian it is."
"It hasn't been the same since Lakhwinder took over from his father," Dora pouted with a faux tear as they walked past the locked door.
"No, it has been better. Especially the chicken."
"I still say that the Naan used to be better."
"You have been ordering the Aloo Kulcha instead of the Naan when old Nihar was still in the kitchen. So don't complain about something you don't eat anyway."
"You know what?" Dora said and this time it was her who side-alonged her husband. "If we have to wait two hours, we might as well do it at home."
Potter Manor had been the ancestral seat of the Potters for centuries, and had been rebuilt several times. At first, it had been a castle to enforce the loyalty of the Welsh population to their English overlords, but that lost its purpose with the Statute of Secrecy. It was followed by a succession of various manor houses to suit the tastes of the head of the family, the last of which was burnt down in the winter of 1980. The building had been a total loss, as Fiendfyre left little but charred remains. And the apple orchard, once the pride and joy of his grandmother, had been likewise devastated. But nature often found a way, and the charred stumps were soon covered in moss and lichens, and new saplings were quick to rise out of the burnt soil. By the time Harry had finished Hogwarts, two decades had passed since the attack, and the resulting biotope had been a unique mix of overgrown hulks and young trees.
When Harry decided to have the manor rebuilt, he had made a few additions, mostly to make his sun-and-sea loving wife happy. Which is why the main building was in the Spanish colonial style, and why there now was a big greenhouse, the glass roof built to look like Wyatt's design of Paddington Station. Inside the magnificent structure was Britain's northernmost banana plantation, as well as a grove that grew prickly pears, mangos and papayas. At first, it was meant to be nothing more than a taste of the south in dreary Britain, but Dobby was quick to inform him that the produce could be sold at ludicrous prices on the farmer markets of Liverpool and Birmingham. Organic Welsh tropical fruits were selling out faster in Merseyside than even magic could grow them.
The greenhouse also had become Hermione's favourite retreat to curl up with a good book whenever she hopped over. And her picnic spot was where Dora decided to apparate to.
"So what do you say about one last, big holiday before your birthday?" Harry wanted to know, quick to keep the conversation from what she and her mother had discussed.
"What do you have in mind?"
"I was thinking Canada, but where exactly depends a bit on what you have in mind and how crazy you want our connections to be."
"What's the craziest thing you have in store?" Dora asked with a mad grin.
"We fly to Whitehorse via Frankfurt, drive a lap through Alaska, then back to Canada, across the Northern wilderness and over the Rockies, then catch a train to Churchill."
"Where's Whitehorse? I've never heard of that."
"It's a small town in the far north, near the border to Alaska. Don't ask me why it has an international airport, or why our connection would be via Germany. It was that or a layover in Vancouver, and I think Emma has you figured out by now. She knows that you are more likely to go for it if there's a strange flight or ferry involved," Harry teased and slung an arm around Dora. Given the crazy itineraries their travels usually involved, they were regulars at a travel agency in Faversham, where the in-laws lived. Getting a rise out of her mother with borderline insane journeys was one thing she had not grown out of. If anything, she had infected him, because he found the whole thing amusing as well. "This would be a fairly Muggle holiday, but we have the big advantage that we can easily apparate up a mountain or across a lake if we find somewhere with a nice view. And of course, we'd be camping in a proper tent with all the conveniences you can enchant it with.
"That sounds nice. Why the train ride though, if there's an airport?"
"I kinda miss the Hogwarts Express. Not so much the actual trip, but the journey into the unknown, the sense of wonder as you look out of the window and are excited to see where you might be going. I was hoping to relive that, and Canada sounds more comfortable than the Trans Siberian railway. Once had been enough there," Harry said with a faraway look before a grin broke out on his face. "Of course, if it turns out to be boring, we can always get sloshed on the train."
"We don't have to fly to Canada to get sloshed on a train. The 11 o'clock for Edinburgh just left, but I'm pretty sure that there's an intercity to Leeds or York waiting back at King's Cross."
"Drinking a fine wine on a train through the Canadian taiga is classy. Finishing off a bottle of rum on 1H03 to Hull is just sad."
"Hull is sad, getting drunk on a train has nothing to do with it."
"So, Canada?" Harry asked with a roll of his eyes.
"I'm intrigued, but not sold. After our last wilderness holiday –"
"That's what gave me the idea. Well, your complaining about it actually. The expedition with Luna was fascinating –"
"If you don't care about her creatures."
"Which we don't," Harry continued smoothly, drawing a snort from his wife. "Yucatán was very interesting, especially the magical remnant of the Maya. However, it was far more dark magic than I wanted to see on a holiday. Luna should have known that all those human sacrifices left scars. And it was a tedious track even with the comforts of magic, and the sweltering heat and humidity were unbearable. So short of visiting the Falklands again, Northern Canada and Alaska are probably the coolest places we can visit right now where we can make ourselves understood."
"Hey, I speak Spanish just fine."
"Not all of us had a sapphic Spanish summer romance."
"Excuses, excuses," Dora laughed. "What was stopping you from chatting up one of the Spanish Beauxbaton girls when they were visiting Hogwarts?"
"I was competing against their champion."
"Exactly, from what I've seen on the few days when I was there as security detail, catty doesn't even begin to describe their relationship with Fleur. You competing against her would already have been half the job. And then, all you would have needed to do is to take them to the Chamber of Secrets and show them the basilisk, and you could have slithered your basilisk into her chamber of secrets."
"I think I would have died of a stroke if one of the Beauxbaton girls told me to bugger her. Or come on the spot," Harry chuckled, trying to think back to how he had been at fourteen. "And now you have given me another regret for my Hogwarts years."
"Poor Harry, only now realising that he could have fucked more than he had pissed back in the day," Tonks mock-drawled in a voice that was surprisingly and disturbingly similar to her mad aunt. "Want me to find a Beauxbaton uniform to make up for it?"
AN:
Beta'ed by doenerkint/Babidibupi
I think that this does a good job at showing a glimpse into the future for Harry and Tonks without being the overused "kid worried about becoming a Slytherin" arc. The epilogue takes place on September 1st 2013 (4 years before the one in DH), making Tonks 39 and Harry 33. Sirius had one daughter (Carina), and adopted Delphi, claiming that she is his daughter born out of wedlock. You can draw your own conclusions from the fact that Bellatrix was not around to stop him, and from some of the other titbits and half-sentences sprinkled throughout this chapter. Ted and Andromeda had two more daughters (Sagitta and Vulpecula) born during the time skip. The idea of those 4 being the Black Sisters redux was too amusing to pass up.
The Frankfurt – Whitehorse flight had been a popular summer operation, stopped not by the pandemic but by Condor phasing out their Boeing 767s and replacing them with larger A330neos. Given how magical transportation is described in the books, I'd figure that for anything longer than across the UK (what you can apparate in one go), airline travel would be more convenient or at least more comfortable, and I enjoy the mental picture of Andromeda still worrying about "those Muggle contraptions" and Tonks doubling down on that.