“Hi Ted,” Harry said.
“Harry?” Teddy said, his face changing: his nose became aquiline, which usually meant he was surprised.
“Hello, Teddy,” Malfoy drawled.
“Draco?” Teddy exclaimed. “Um, does someone want to explain to me what’s going on?”
There was the splashing of many children’s feet returning, and Harry sighed inwardly as the sigh of a dozen small girls caused a breeze in the sewers.
Teddy smiled a charming, rueful little smile. “Hi, kids. How are you doing? Do you want some chocolate?”
Teddy always had chocolate.
As ten girls almost hit Teddy in the chest, Harry took a moment to crush down all of the petty jealousy he’d been feeling towards Teddy recently. Teddy was his godson, and he loved him: it didn’t matter that Teddy—in between part-time modelling and romancing Veela—was the new rising star of the Aurors.
Teddy had problems keeping partners too, Harry reminded himself. Of course, that was because they kept falling madly in love with him.
He glanced towards his sons, and saw them staring at Teddy with rapturous hero-worship.
“Hi, Teddy,” they chorused adoringly, together with Score Malfoy.
“Hey, James, Score. Al,” Teddy said. “Rosie, sweetheart, aren’t you meant to be in Hogwarts?”
Rose fanned herself with her notepad. “I forget,” she said dreamily.
James tore his eyes away from his hero long enough to absorb the fact that his stock had risen appreciably among the womenfolk what with Teddy Lupin knowing his name.
“My dad is his godfather,” he told Xenophilia Thomas. “He eats at our house.”
Zen looked at him as if she’d forgotten who he was, but a couple more girls sidled up to him with eyes that invited him to tell them more.
“That’s nothing,” Score sneered, eyes fixed on Teddy. “He’s my cousin. My Great-Aunt Andy brought him up.”
One girl, Something Vane, Harry couldn’t remember, looked speculatively at Scorpius as if wondering when Teddy’s genes were going to show up. She seemed to decide that she would wait around for that, and advanced on Score with intent.
“I hear,” she said in an alarmingly throaty voice for a child of twelve or thirteen, “they call you the Boy Who Scored.”
Score took a smart step back.
“Um,” he said. “Quidditch. They call me that because I’m good at—” The girl kept advancing, and Score’s nerve broke. Along with his drawl. “Quidditch?” he said uncertainly.
“What else are you good at?” purred Miss Vane.
“Dad,” Score appealed, and retreated behind his father.
Malfoy looked somewhat disconcerted by his son’s behaviour.
“Score?” he said. “Why are we hiding from young women?”
From behind Malfoy’s elbow came a dark voice.
“Mr Potter says that it’s okay to be a late bloomer.”
Malfoy looked a little bit like he wanted to laugh. “Don’t listen to that awful man, Scorpius.”
Bettina Goyle was standing looking overwhelmed by the magnificence of Teddy and utterly unable to do anything about it. She turned her huge eyes on Al as the least threatening person in the sewer.
“Does he really have dinner with you?” she asked timidly.
“Yeah,” Al said, and beamed at her. “He’s really cool, Teddy. I’ll introduce you. It’s Bettina, isn’t it?”
Bettina beamed shyly back at him. “You can call me Betty.”
Al shook her hand gravely. “You can call me—”
“Potter!” Score commanded from behind his father. “Come away!”
Harry was somewhat relieved that Score seemed to regard girls as a triple threat. Al had an unsettling tendency to bond for life with his former Slytherin classmates’ offspring.
“Would somebody please explain things to me,” Teddy said plaintively, bestowing a kiss and a chocolate on Zen Thomas, who seemed vaguely startled to find a queue forming behind her.
“Look, they’re our kids,” Malfoy said, callously abandoning his only child to go explain things to Teddy.
Score Malfoy looked around suspiciously, and jumped when Rose tapped him on the shoulder.
“Oh, it’s you, Weasley,” he said, taking a deep breath of relief. “I thought it was a girl.”
“Excuse me?” said Rose.
Score looked bewildered. He looked even more bewildered when Rose hit him over the head with her notebook.
“I cannot even believe your stupidity. I will not put up with this. I don’t have to. I am going to surround myself with girl friends and never have to deal with men again!”
Rose stormed away. Scorpius leaned against the walls of the sewer and drawled: “I think I may have said something wrong.”
Rose went and detached Zen Thomas from Teddy. Zen seemed puzzled and then completely delighted by Rose’s agitated request to be best friends. Bettina Goyle had evidently overheard and was shyly making her way over to them, her small face hopeful.
Score sidled over to Harry, obviously intent on using him as a barrier between Score and the womenfolk. Harry gave him a slightly startled glance.
Score gave a small one-shouldered shrug. “I owe you anyway, Mr Potter.”
“What for?” Harry asked.
“Telling Potter about getting to pick which house you get into.”
“Oh right,” Harry said. “Well, yes. I see that Al’s doing all right in Slytherin, though. I’m sure he made the right choice, asking to be put there.”
“Not Potter,” Score said impatiently, and then added with a touch of pride: “The hat barely touched his head before he was in Slytherin. It was me. It tried to put me in Tool House! Dad would’ve had a fit!”
“Oh,” said Harry.
“With Toolface, too,” added Scorpius. He was clearly brooding on his wrongs. He was also clearly not getting any better at this tact thing.
He shot James a filthy look, which James returned with interest before turning back and saying passionately: “I’m so glad you came to rescue us, Teddy.”
“You ingrate,” said Malfoy, in much the same way his son said his favourite word. “Teddy,” he continued. “I will answer all your questions if you want to come by the house tomorrow. Just get me out of this place. There are rats and Potters. I can’t take it anymore.”
“How do you two know each other?” Harry asked.
“Great-Aunt Andy and Grandmother live together,” Score said, sounding unimpressed with Harry’s mental prowess. “There are pictures of Teddy holding me when I was a baby,” he added. “We spend Christmases together. Some of them. Because sometimes he has to go to your place. Which is not fair, we have fewer people.”
“I thought sometimes you were on assignment,” Harry said helplessly.
Teddy’s hair changed all the time, but never his eyes. They were always warm, grey and full of secrets.
“Did you?” he said. “Have a chocolate.”
“You’re a sly one, Teddy Lupin,” Malfoy remarked, with what was obviously long-standing affection.
Harry was starting to suspect who had taught Teddy all those filthy Portuguese songs when he was little. That had always been a bit of a mystery. He also had no illusions that Malfoy hadn’t been deliberately keeping out of his way. Which really, had he known before, he would’ve thought of as a favour.
“I can’t believe you two are out here!” .
“We did manage not to kill each other,” Harry said dryly. “Not that I wasn’t tempted.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Teddy said. “You shouldn’t be so reckless, Harry. You’re not as young as you once were, you know. What would we all do without you?”
He smiled a sweet smile, but Harry was too busy being outraged to melt. Malfoy was smirking like a demon.
“You’re so right, Teddy,” he faltered. “Do you know, I think all this sewer water has—” He fought to keep his face solemn. “Has brought on my rheumatism.”
“Shut up, Malfoy, oh my God.”
“I think Potter put his back out,” Malfoy continued solemnly. “Or is it that he has a gimpy knee? The body just breaks down, you see. So sad. I look on you as a crutch in his old age, Teddy.”
“I do my best to help out,” Teddy said sympathetically, mischief along with the secrets in his eyes.
“I still have an arrest record that’s twice yours,” Harry said, grinning at Teddy, whose record was climbing every month. Harry was proud of him, more than anything else.
“You forgot to mention that he was a whippersnapper,” Malfoy said helpfully.
“Yes,” Harry said. “These things slip your mind, with age.”
All the children requested that Teddy be the one to Levitate them out to the school.
“I feel our glory has been sadly lessened,” Malfoy said. “Little ingrates. We should’ve fed just one of them to the alligators. That’d larn them.”
“Little Franz, for choice,” Harry said.
Teddy popped his now-deep crimson head back into the space where the grille had been. “Do either of you need help?”
“No,” Harry said, and was hauling himself up by his fingertips when he heard Malfoy quaver out in tremulous tones suggestive of an eighty-seven-year-old in poor health: “If you please, young man.”
Malfoy, Harry thought, rolling his eyes. He never changed.
Walking down the corridors of Durmstrang to report the return of the students to their headmistress, Teddy held Score and Al’s hands.
James, hanging off Harry’s arm and scuffing his shoes against the stone floors, was obviously not thrilled.
“Everyone likes Al best,” he said sulkily.
“I’m sure Teddy likes you both the same,” Harry said, and then looked down at James’s head with a sudden spasm of worry, wondering if he was being an awful father. James obviously hadn’t ruffled his hair in a while, and the black spikes were drooping like a wilting flower. “And I love you both the same,” he said hastily. “You know that, James, don’t you? I—”
“Yes, I know that,” James said grumpily. “Of course I know that.”
“Okay,” Harry said, and breathed again. “Then what—”
“Nothing,” James snapped, and glanced covertly over at Teddy, Al and Score.
“Oh, James,” said Harry. “How did you meet Score, exactly?”
“I was just trying to be friendly,” James snarled. “I just heard Uncle Ron talking like he was, I don’t know, dangerous or something, so I thought maybe I’d see what he was talking about, so I went and found him outside the bathrooms reading Flying Through the Ages which is, of course, the best book in the world, so I offered to show him around, introduce him to the right people—”
Harry made a note to himself to have a strong word with Ron for making Score Malfoy out to be mad, bad and dangerous to know, and thus obviously irresistible.
“And he just called me a tool and walked off with Al,” James said, incandescent with indignation. “Rude!”
“Wait,” Harry said. “When did Al come into this?”
“I don’t know, he came out, he’d been getting sick, I made a bit of a joke about it. It was funny, too,” James said moodily. “Not that he laughed. Rude!”
“Oh, James,” Harry said again. “Did you possibly kick your brother at any point?”
“Might’ve,” muttered James.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Harry said. “And Al had just made friends with Score. If you were trying to make friends, you probably shouldn’t kick his other friend, do you see?”
“Who was trying to make friends?” James demanded. “Not me. I don’t care!”
He glared at Scorpius’s back with what Harry was horrified to realise might be sullen yearning.
“Also I’m going blind,” James continued in a voice of doom. “I can hardly see anything even with my glasses on. Can I have a seeing eye dog when I’m blind?”
“James, you’re not going blind,” Harry said patiently. “You’re just wearing Rosie’s glasses.”
He glanced around to find Malfoy and thus Rose and Bettina, who were hanging off him, and found them all much closer than he’d expected. Malfoy was frowning thoughtfully in James’s direction.
As Rose and James exchanged glasses, Teddy led the others back a little way to them.
“If we’d had the Slytherins on the right side during the war,” Al was saying, obviously too bowled over by Teddy to keep all his plans entirely secret. “Things would’ve been different. Look at what a difference one made—”
“We did win,” Teddy pointed out mildly.
“Yes,” Al said, “but I think that fewer people could’ve died.”
Teddy’s hair looked grey for an instant, as if there was a shadow passing over it.
“That would’ve been nice,” Teddy murmured, and then he smiled brilliantly and the moment passed. “Harry, Draco, I meant to tell you. I think you might be in a bit of trouble. When I was here before, there were a good lot of—men in uniform. You know it’s not, ah, the first time you sort of seized something you weren’t assigned to, Harry.”
He looked apologetic.
“What wild miscarriage of justice is this?” Malfoy demanded. “This school flings our children to the alligators—there are skeletons in those sewers, you know—and then they round up the men in uniform to give us a stern talking to? Their tiny skeleton collection running low, was it?”
“I can—” Harry began.
“You will shut up and let me do the talking, Potter,” Malfoy said.
“This’ll be great,” Scorpius told Al, in what Scorpius obviously fondly imagined was a discreet undertone. “It’ll be like the time he had a tantrum at Spain.”
“Those were negotiations, Scorpius!”
Score looked unconvinced. Harry did not blame him.
“Oh well, let’s get this over with,” Harry said. He leaned forward and pulled the headmistress’s doors wide open.
There were a lot of people in uniform in the room. There was a flurry of movement on their arrival and then Harry felt a brief sharp moment of unease: of something lost, and then realised that Malfoy was no longer at his shoulder but walking into the room.
The woman in front of Araminta von Bosau’s desk whirled, long black plait flying, and met Malfoy half-way. Then she hit him.
“You benighted Englishman,” she said in furious Portuguese. “What the hell d’you have to say for yourself?”
“Ow, my jaw,” said Malfoy in the same language.
“I come home and find it deserted,” raged the woman. “I send an Owl to my son and receive a message back from blithering imbeciles telling me that my entire family may have been eaten by alligators. Do you have any conception of how worried I have been? I should have—”
“—Had me shot and thrown in a ditch the day I walked into your camp,” Malfoy filled in for her helpfully. “Béatriz. You came back.”
General Costa looked at him with ire and as if she wasn’t quite sure how he’d got hold of her hands. She looked much as she had in Score’s picture, a little older: a severe, high-cheekboned face, a white scar slashing down one cheek that must have just missed her eye. She was as tall as Malfoy: as tall as Harry was, and when her hands in Malfoy’s twitched Harry thought she was getting ready to hit him again.
Her hands just closed on Malfoy’s, though. “Of course I came back,” she said. “Did you think I wasn’t—oh Draco, you stupid fool. What on earth puts these ideas into your head? I blame the inbreeding.” Her eyes started to smoulder again. “I also blame the inbreeding for you dashing off to get yourself eaten by alligators.”
“But darling,” Malfoy said, all innocence, and let go of one hand in order to make a gesture that somehow encompassed Teddy Lupin and gave a suggestion of shining hair being flipped back. “I was perfectly safe. I was rescued by Lupin, after all. Teddy Lupin.”
Harry snorted and then found the General’s smouldering gaze had swung to him. That was all the warning he got before she’d yanked away from Malfoy and bore down on him with her wand out.
Harry had never been out-drawn in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. He got his own wand out and aimed between her eyes.
“Draco,” Béatriz said. “Who is this man, and why does he understand Portuguese?”
She and Harry kept their eyes on each other, gaze unwavering, waiting for a weakness.
Malfoy strode forward and snatched both their wands away. “Béatriz, Potter. Potter, Béatriz. Don’t kill each other, you’ll make a mess on the headmistress’s carpet.”
Béatriz regarded Harry with a little less anger. “Potter?” she said. “Oh yes. I remember—sixteen years ago, at the Portuguese embassy? You were very drunk.”
“—very drunk,” drawled Scorpius in English, and that was when Harry realised that Score was helpfully translating the entire conversation for the benefit of the entire room.
“Dad, you devil!” said James.
Everyone was staring at them. Harry felt a bit hot and cold with mortification.
“James, don’t be ridiculous, I was already married,” he said, and then slowly, in Portuguese: “You were—were you wearing a red dress?”
Béatriz nodded absentmindedly, but her attention had already turned back to her husband. “This must have been an interesting trip to the sewers,” she said dryly. “Leaving aside the alligators.”
Malfoy appeared to be amusing himself by tossing up Harry and Béatriz’s wands into the air one at a time and then catching them. “Hey,” he said in a pleased sort of way. “Does this mean I’m master of the Elder Wand again?”
Harry snorted. “Sure. Good luck finding it. Give me my wand back, Malfoy.”
“Hmm,” Malfoy said. “Let me think. What did you ever do with my old wand?”
“Um,” Harry said. “I think I put it in a drawer somewhere.”
“Oh, did you?”
“I could look for it,” Harry offered. “If you like.”
Malfoy threw Harry back his wand. “Nah, I don’t care anymore.” He looked back at his wife, and put the wand into her hand, touching her wrist as he did so. “Why did you come back in such a hurry, Béatriz?”
“Why does there have to be a reason?” Béatriz asked unconvincingly.
“Béatriz.”
“I know I promised that Score could have Hogwarts,” Béatriz said. “I feel like I should take you both back with me—”
“Mum,” Score broke in urgently. “Mum, no. Hogwarts. I want to stay in Hogwarts. I want—” He threw out a hand, like a very imperious drowning man, and Al caught it.
“Don’t worry, Score,” Al said instantly. “You can come live with us.”
James’s face was a picture.
Score did not look overly enthused, either. “Dad,” he said pleadingly.
“Whatever you need, Score, you know that,” Malfoy assured him at once. “Béatriz?”
“I need you to come back,” Béatriz admitted. “The ceasefire’s falling to pieces. It’s diplomacy, Draco, you know I can’t—”
“We’ll work it out,” Malfoy told her. “We always do. I’ll make a plan, or you’ll shoot them all.” He put a hand to her scarred cheek, fingers lingering at the spot between where her scar ended and her mouth began. “Right?”
“I only shot everyone that one time,” Béatriz muttered.
“I’ll come back with you. In the summer Score can come. By next year things will be sorted out. Would I lie to you?”
“Shamelessly,” said Béatriz, and that made Malfoy smile.
“Can Potter come to Portugal?” Score asked. “I will look after him. I will teach him to use a rifle.”
“That’s an important skill,” Béatriz said. “We’ll play that game,” she said, and looked at Malfoy with love and mockery. “You know, when we shoot rats. The trick, as you know, Score, is to wait until the rats are bloated from feeding on the corpses, and—”
“You’re disgusting,” Malfoy told her, looking terribly happy. “I should have found a nice English witch to marry.”
“Good afternoon, Mr Potter,” said Araminta von Bosau, looking up from some papers as if she had just spotted him. “Ah, I see the children are back. How nice. I told you there was nothing to worry about.”
“Now see here,” said Harry and Malfoy in crisp unison.
“Seeing you here, it reminds me,” Araminta continued. “I got an Owl yesterday from your wife. I believe she wanted me to tell you something about—a baby? Agony? She seemed quite annoyed.” She began to pat at the drifts of paper on her table. “I have it here somewhere…”
“Oh my God.”.
“Go,” said Malfoy. “I’ll sort things out here.”
“Yes, we’ve got everything under control,” said Teddy, who was soon to be swallowed by a heap of little girls.
“Okay. Er. See you sometime. Nice to meet you, Mrs Malfoy,” said Harry, at which point Béatriz rolled her eyes. “Come on, kids.”
He seized James by the shoulder and disengaged Al from Score with an effort.
“Come on, come on,” Harry said, sweeping them along.
“Dad, can we please call the baby Scorpius,” Al said, running to keep up.
“Dad,” James said with dawning indignation. “Dad, Teddy Lupin stole my women. Make him give them back!”
When they met Ron on the platform, Lily took a look at the lurid colours on his Hawaiian shirt and said: “I think I might actually be sick from nerves after all, Mum.”
“Al already used the bag,” Ginny said. “Don’t you dare.”
“What with this and the moustache, I think it’s some kind of mid-life crisis,” Hermione said philosophically. “You should see his new car.”
“Dad fixed the Jag so it flies, you know,” Ron told Harry.
“As long as you don’t go chasing younger women, I suppose I can put up with it,” Hermione said.
“I am not a born fool,” said Ron. “Besides, you look as young as the day we met!”
“What, she looks eleven?” James asked. “Uncle Ron, that’s nasty.”
Ron coughed and James continued to look as if he felt that Ron and the author of Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches both lacked James’s skills.
Al and Rose were both standing on their tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd. Harry looked at Al inquiringly, but Al didn’t seem to have spotted the Malfoys yet.
“Hi, Harry!” someone said behind him, and Harry turned around, unable to place the voice.
Cho stood in front of him, her hair tied back with a ribbon and her smile as sweet as it had been when they were in school. She was holding the hand of a toddler.
“Hello, Cho,” Harry said. “Bit young for Hogwarts, isn’t he?”
“Vince,” Cho said encouragingly. “Say hello to Mummy’s friend.”
Vince made a squeaking sound that might have been a hello.
“It’s my girl,” Cho said. “We’re transferring—oh. Sweetheart, over here!”
She flashed a dazzling smile at Goyle, who was being dragged through the crowds by Bettina. Rose gave a crow of triumph and ran over to them.
“Daddy, this is Rose!” Bettina said, glowing up at her. “She’s going to take care of me.”
The girls put their heads together and started whispering. Goyle looked at the ground. Cho went over to him and slipped an arm around his waist.
“Greg, you remember Harry, don’t you?”
“Hi,” Goyle mumbled.
“Greg—” Cho lowered her voice. “You’re not still—? We were kids. Nobody cares about that kind of thing anymore.”
“Hi,” Harry volunteered. “Er. How’re you doing, Goyle?”
Goyle looked up and smiled a tentative smile. “‘M doing okay.” Goyle cleared his throat. “Um,” he added. “Thanks. I never said.”
“That’s okay,” Harry said.
Cho’s eyes fell on Ginny. “Oh, look at the baby. How adorable!”
Ginny shifted the baby in her arms and gave Cho a much more friendly smile than she ever had before. “Your Vince is cute.”
Ginny and Cho plunged into a conversation about their children’s perfection, and Goyle hovered anxiously over Bettina and Rose. Ron moved over to Harry.
“I still can’t get over the fact they got married.”
“You aren’t the one who used to go out with her,” Harry began. That was when Al made a sound like a tiny trumpet and went charging through the crowds.
Harry’s eyes followed him and Ron gave a low whistle.
“You know, Mrs Malfoy’s not bad.”
“When Hermione kills you, you will have nobody but yourself to blame,” Harry said, seeing the swathe of people cut down—well, viciously elbowed—as Score made a path towards Al.
“Not a patch on my beautiful wife, of course!” Ron said loudly. Hermione glanced up from reassuring Lily and gave Ron a suspicious look.
Malfoy was making his way towards Al and Score, whose beautiful reunion seemed to consist of Score conducting an interrogation while Al gazed raptly. Malfoy’s fair hair was in his eyes and catching the sun: he was holding his wife’s hand.
Al and Score made their way back, Malfoy and Béatriz following them. The straps of Béatriz’s red dress did little to conceal the heavy scar tissue on her left shoulder.
“Ron Weasley,” said Ron, shaking her hand.
“Béatriz Oliveira da Costa. Weasley? Draco’s mentioned you.” She slanted a smile over at Malfoy. “I must say, I like your moustache.”
Ron looked gratified.
“Yes,” said Béatriz. “In Portugal, we admire a man with luxuriant hair. We see it as a sign of virility. So many of these Englishmen, pallid and inbred, with sadly receding—”
“You’ll have to forgive my wife,” Malfoy drawled. “Her brain was unsettled by warfare. Has hallucinations. Very sad.”
He sounded somewhat abstracted: he was looking fixedly at Scorpius. Score saw the look, let go of Al and walked over to James.
“Hello—other Potter,” he said.
James’s hand flew to his hair. “Hi!”
“Good—summer?” Score said, drawl dragging on forever.
“Yes,” James said valiantly. “I mean, ah. Yes. So how about those, er, Tornados?”
“I’m going to shake your hand now,” Score announced abruptly.
“Okay,” said James.
They shook hands. Then Score shrugged and strolled back to his father. James sidled over to Harry.
“I knew it was just a matter of time,” he said, fluffing his hair again. “I’m just that cool.”
Harry was about to respond, but James’s eye was caught by Bettina and he wandered over to say hello.
“I’m going to shake your hand now,” Malfoy repeated. “You are my beloved son, but smooth you are not.”
“What, I did what you told me to do,” Score said, sounding martyred. “I don’t know why it was such a big deal.” He smiled his easy, sweet smile up at his father. “You’re weird, Dad.”
Malfoy pushed Score’s fair hair back from his face. “I’m a genius, Scorpius. Someday you’ll realise that.”
Temporarily bereft of Score, Al came over and leaned against Harry. “I’ll write you tomorrow,” he promised. “I’ll tell you how Lily is getting on.”
“And all about your plans, I hope,” Harry said. “I shall publish them once you are Minister for Magic.”
Al laughed his sweet nervous laugh, playing with Harry’s jacket sleeve. “Dad,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“When you told me about, about Professor Snape,” Al said. “That was when I came up with the plan, and… I mean, you did mean something like that, didn’t you? If I’d done—something different—would that have made you prouder?”
Harry looked down at him, wide green eyes, shooting up now and still a little brown from Portugal. His kid.
“Al,” he said. “I can’t see how.”
Al leaned against him a little more, face turned into his sleeve.
“I’m just saying you might be in Slytherin,” said James.
“Of course she’ll be in Slytherin,” Score said, his deep voice combative. That truce had lasted all of three minutes. “She’s Potter’s sister. She’s going to be in Slytherin where we can take care of her.”
“Women do not need you to take care of them, Scorpius Malfoy,” said Rose haughtily. “Though I forgive you for your previous idiocy.”
“Right,” said Score. “I forget, what did I do again?”
Rose snorted. “Of course you’ll be in Gryffindor, Lily. You can be in my new all-girls’ club.”
“I think somebody might ask my opinion on this,” Lily said, narrowing her hazel eyes. “Because I don’t intend to be in either.”
Harry looked at his daughter inquiringly.
“I have quite enough of my brothers at home,” Lily explained, glancing up at him. “Besides, everybody is always on about Gryffindor and Slytherin. It’s boring. I,” Lily said with calm decision, “am going to be in Hufflepuff.”
There was mass consternation.
“A sister in Hufflepuff and a brother in Slytherin!” James moaned faintly. “I’m going to throw myself under the Hogwarts Express.”
“Nobody talks about Hufflepuff,” Lily said. “Some people say it’s not even the house for anything special. It’s going to be the house of awesome. And you people—” she gave her brothers a superior glance, “are going to be too busy fighting to stop me. I’ve won a lot of races that way.”
Score looked mildly impressed. “Still might end up in Slytherin, thinking like that.”
“Nope,” Lily said triumphantly. “Because you can pick which house you want to be in! Right, Dad?”
Harry grinned at her. “Right, Lily.”
“Ha!”.
“I think it would be nice to have someone to sit with when I sit at the Hufflepuff table,” Al remarked. He and Lily shared a smile.
“Only if you bring handsome friends. Score does not count.”
“He does count!” Al said.
“Now look here, Lily, I was counting on you,” James began.
“I need more members for my club,” Rose said.
“Listen to me, Lily,” Score drawled. “You can be in both houses. I have a cunning plan.”
“I love the piping voices of the innocent little children,” Malfoy observed over the deafening noise.
Alarmed by the battle royal over Lily’s House, Vincent Goyle started to roar at the top of his voice. Cho and Goyle dropped to their knees and started comforting him, and Harry cast a wary glance over at Ginny.
“Jacqueline’s fine,” she said.
Malfoy looked slightly startled, and then he smiled. Harry had kind of thought he might.
“That’s a nice name,” he remarked. “Exotic.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Harry. Also frankly, he had run out of people to name children after.
Béatriz seemed to register the presence of a baby for the first time, and backed up a few steps.
“They’re a little intimidating when they’re that small,” she said. “So fragile. So easy to forget when it’s time to leave camp.”
Malfoy, looking pleased and a little proprietary, advanced. “Can I see—?” he began, and stooped over the baby in Ginny’s arms.
“He likes them, though,” Béatriz said, as if reporting something bizarre.
Malfoy was murmuring something to the baby, low and sweet. Jacqueline opened her green eyes and laughed up at him. As he stooped further something shining fell out of his open-necked shirt and swung towards her on a chain. Jacqueline crowed and batted at it.
“Draco Malfoy, is that my engagement ring?” Béatriz demanded. “You said that you’d pawn that for money to feed the villagers! That was why I agreed to marry you!”
“I did pawn it, my beloved,” Malfoy said, flicking the ring to amuse Jacqueline further. Diamonds in a strange pattern caught the sunlight. “Then I bought it back. More money into the local economy. Very beneficial to the villagers. Besides, it’s a nice ring, much too nice for peasants.”
Béatriz was laughing. “You lying snake,” she said. It seemed to be affectionate.
Ron and Hermione were afflicted by a vehement cry from Hugo that he didn’t see why he couldn’t start Hogwarts now. Ginny had to shush Jacqueline.
Malfoy left Ginny to it, and exchanged a few words with Goyle, who laughed with the same loud guffaw he’d had back in school. It made Malfoy look just as pleased with himself as it had back then, too.
Then he turned to Harry.
“I’m sorry about the baby.”
“What?” Harry said.
Malfoy looked very sympathetic. “That it looks like she’s going to turn out redheaded, I mean. Bear it like a man, Potter.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re ridiculous, Malfoy. How’s Portugal?”
“Bending to my will. Slowly but surely.”
“Good,” Harry said. “Get back to the Unspeakables. I’m tired of not having my paperwork fast-tracked.”
“I have not the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Potter,” Malfoy said loftily, and went pink.
“Also,” said Harry, and hesitated. “If you’re back. Andromeda’s having Christmas dinner at her house this year. Saves Ginny cooking, with Jacqueline and everything.”
“I might be,” Malfoy said, hesitating as well. “Maybe.” His glance flashed on Score, quick and speaking, and then he smiled. “It might save Score pining, anyway.”
“Oh, like you can talk,” Harry said. “The pining doesn’t make your child projectile vomit.”
Malfoy laughed again. Béatriz came over to them and he reached out and took her hand. “Train’s leaving,” she remarked, and then there was tumult as everyone tried to have a touching parting and the train’s engines started up as if it wanted to have its share in the noise.
A vaguely Creeveyish child came along and snapped a picture of Harry that left the white flash still going on and off behind his eyes as Al hugged him.
“These photographers chase me everywhere these days,” Ron sighed. “Must be my moustache.”
“Must be,” Harry agreed. Al squeezed his neck a final time and then let go and was dragged onboard by Score. Harry was still kneeling when Lily darted in and gave him a hug too: Harry laughed, slightly startled, and she hung on tight.
“Hufflepuff’s okay, right?” she whispered in his ear.
“Whatever you want is great,” Harry whispered back.
She danced back and away, into the carriage. James and Score appeared to be starting an argument on who would take care of Lily’s trunk: neither seemed to notice the fact that Rose was already dragging it and telling them that women were doing it for themselves.
The train started to move along the platform and the children waved enthusiastically, Lily’s face bright with excitement, Al grinning his chipped-tooth grin and leaning back against Score, standing tall and effortlessly confident beside him, who did not need to search for his father but had his eyes fixed on him already, always sure of where he was.
Everybody shouted goodbye.
“No more alligators, James!” Ginny shouted, and James gave her two thumbs up.
“Well, Potter,” Malfoy said once the windows passing them by no longer contained their children, “See you sometime, I suppose. Maybe at Christmas.”
“See you,” Harry said.
“We’re having Malfoy over at Christmas?” Ron said doubtfully as Malfoy and Béatriz walked down the platform with Goyle and Cho. “Will he bring his wife?”
“Ron,” Hermione said on a warning note, and Ron grabbed her hand.
“Come on. C’mon, Hugo. Rosie isn’t here to tell us not to and the photographers have finally left me alone. Let’s take a spin in the Jag.”
Hugo perked up and Hermione laughed, and Harry slid his arm around Ginny’s shoulders.
“I still don’t know what happened down in those sewers,” Ginny said darkly. “Except that now we’re having Malfoy over for Christmas, apparently. Why do you always do your heroic deeds without me?”
“You do heroic deeds as well. Having four children is pretty heroic.”
“This is true,” Ginny agreed. “You couldn’t do it. You’d never get your figure back.”
She grinned up at him and he laughed, planning a walk with her and Jacqueline, talking, in the garden the way they’d used to walk through the Hogwarts grounds. She was much more beautiful than she’d been when they were in school: they talked now.
“Hey, let me hold the baby.”
“You want to?” Ginny looked mildly surprised.
“I do,” said Harry, and took careful hold of Jacqueline. He’d get it right this time, he thought. He’d done all right so far.
Jacqueline blinked green eyes up at him, waving an imperious fist as if she expected another diamond ring to fall out of the sky for her amusement. Maybe he’d get her a toy for Christmas, something shining. Christmas, with Malfoy there: maybe they’d get a chance to talk again.
A long way up the sunlit platform now, Malfoy looked back over his shoulder and smiled that crooked, complicated smile. He was swinging Béatriz’s hand as they walked.
“Everything all right, Harry?” Ginny said, smiling down at Jacqueline and then up at him.
“All’s well,” said Harry, talking like a bell-ringer to make her laugh, adding: “Getting better all the time.”
The train was a gleaming snake in the distance, making its way through green hills to the beloved castle and always carrying the children home again. His child was warm in his arms and he felt suffused with a sense of well-being: the sun was shining and the world was saved and changing, too. There were no chances lost that could not be found in time, and no choices that defined you forever.
There were no endings, not really.