Happily Ever After

London, January 9 – Monday, 2023.

Future times / Present selves.

Big amber eyes stared at Draco from where he was lying on the floor. Faint cries were heard from a distance. He grunted, his muscles aching from falling flat on his back. Where was he?

Hermione also made sounds of discomfort to his left, but Draco’s eyes remained locked in the child’s piercing stare.

“Dad?” The boy finally asked, cutting the silence after long moments.

The question did nothing to make Draco any less confused, but a sharp cry from his right cut his train of thought.

“Muuummmm!”

Turning his head, he saw a slightly younger boy, equally as blond as him, also lying on the floor in a fit of cries, clutching his right leg that seemed to be enveloped in a bandage.

“Is this the heirloom or not?” The older boy pressed, shoving the necklace that had caused all that trouble in Draco’s face. He saw from the corner of his eye Hermione hesitantly stand up and immediately freeze on the spot.

“Father, answer, please! I’m going to miss the Hogwarts Express if you take too long!” The annoying boy kept asking. Was he not seeing the situation? Was this normal to him, routine? Where were they?

Draco grunted again, taking the necklace from the boy’s hand and pocketing it quickly. Damn ancestral magic, damn Black family curses that thought of themselves as an autonomous entity. The pounding on his head cleared for a few seconds and a new, more important question bolted to the forefront of his mind.

When were they?

“What will I take to school then?” The boy seemed more aggravated every time he opened his mouth, and the symphony of cries all around them made it harder for Draco to register his words.

“Sorry, what?” He asked, already annoyed at everything that was happening.

“The heirloom you promised I could take to my presentation! What will it be?” The child insisted.

Well, wherever time and place they had been sent to, it was one in which that aggravating little boy knew them intimately and didn’t find the situation in the least bit worrying. At least not as much as his schoolwork.

Draco turned his head and saw that Hermione remained frozen on the spot. He followed to where her eyes were locked, on a wall on the other side of the room, and saw what had caught her attention.

Oh.

On the wall, a big portrait was framed and hung in front of a long dining table. He and Hermione stood in the center of the picture, with the older boy, two identical-looking younger boys, and a little girl standing in front of them. They were dressed in neutral tones, both he and Hermione were smiling proudly, the little girl had a smug look on her face, the older boy looked with a blasé expression to the side and the twins displayed matching smiles. A family. Them.

“What…” Draco stood up, fighting a wave of dizziness.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Hermione spoke, only loud enough to be heard, still not facing him.

Draco couldn’t formulate a response, but his obvious confusion did not detain the boy.

“Father, I’m going to fail History of Magic if I don’t complete this assignment,” He stood up and tugged on Draco’s suit, forcing the adult to look at him.

“What do you need?” Draco asked, exasperated. Maybe, if he obliged, the boy would leave him alone for long enough for him to find any clues of where, and when, they were.

“A family heirloom that I can take to Hogwarts!”

Only then did Draco look around at where they stood. About six boxes filled with what he recognized were artifacts of the House of Black were open and spread across the space between three counters, on the ground, and on top of a long coffee table. There was no buzz of curses or dark magic, which made sense if that was indeed his family home. He would never bring anything dangerous close to his own children.

Hello?? Family Home? Children? His brain tried to remind him of the absurdity of the situation, but Draco was operating in automatic mode, much like he would do during the war when he wanted to keep himself as far away from the realities of his position as possible.

He took the watch of his grandfather Cygnus from where he kept it in his breast pocket. He didn’t have enough time or mind to check anything, so better go with something he knew to be harmless.

“Take this,” he handed the heirloom to the expectant boy who took it with careful hands. “It’s from my grandfather Cygnus Black. It has a location enchantment that makes it tell the right time wherever you are in the world. Quite useful, actually.”

The boy smiled and a set of dimples appeared on his cheeks. Like Granger’s.

“Thanks, Dad! He excitedly replied before running up the stairs that were located in the corner of the room.

The other boy had stopped loudly crying and was just whining again, and Draco motioned to him.

“Aren’t you going to do anything about that?”

“Did you hit your head?” Hermione’s eyes shot daggers at him. She was still rooted in her spot. “How can you function with all of this… information?”

“Well, Granger, I think it’s pretty clear. This damned necklace transported us to a dimension in spacetime in which we are married and have a loud bunch of kids. Now, try to calm the boy down so we can start planning on how to get back!” He said, deeply annoyed, as he made his way to the same stairs the older boy had disappeared from. How had Granger survived the war if she apparently couldn’t focus under pressure? Worse, was the idea of being him so repulsive that it sent her down a spiral worse than Voldemort ever could? Well, there went his hopes of ever asking her out.

It was true that Draco could not stand Hermione Granger during their time at Hogwarts. How could someone who was supposed to be inferior to him be so good at everything? At first, she was an annoying presence that made him feel like a complete failure, for not being better than her. But, when she proved to be a better witch than everybody else in their year and in their school, her existence became all the more repulsive. Hermione Granger was, to the young Draco Malfoy’s mind, a walking ambiguity to his beliefs. She was supposed to be stupid, yet she was the smartest person he knew; she was supposed to be weaker, but Draco found her even stronger than Potter who she was always glued to.

And yet, even with all those conflicting thoughts, Draco was not blind. He saw the way she grew to her looks, how her smile matched the glint of her eyes, how her laugh echoed beautifully through the Great Hall. When the War followed its course and Draco all but deserted (until he finally did) Voldemort’s army, and after he had paid his debts with the law, it was easier to admit he was wrong, it was relief. It did not help his case having to share an office with her every day, because now there were no unwritten laws stopping him from admitting just how much she captured his attention. It was all too easy to be charmed by that woman.

“Where are you going?” She asked, matching his annoyance and interrupting his daydreaming.

“I’m going to see what all this screaming is about!” Draco yelled back his reply, already in the middle of the steps.

On the other floor of the house, street-level, great windows opened to a vast backyard. The grass was still covered by a thin layer of snow, and two children ran around the expense of the property.

A boy, identical to the one whining down the stairs, chased a girl half his size. His face was twisted into a deep frown and he looked like he was shedding a few tears. The girl was laughing, gleefully.

Still operating based on his adrenaline, Draco opened the great doors that offered access to the outside.

“What are you two doing?” He asked with a firm voice, trying to mimic the way his father spoke whenever he caught Draco and Theo doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing, during their childhoods. Only then did he realize he didn’t know what to call them.

Both kids stopped their running and looked at their ‘father’ from where he stood.

“Aurora has my football,” the clearly upset boy said. Aurora.

“Aurora, give the ball back to him,” the name felt weird on Draco’s lips as he tried saying it, but not as weird as the notion of having a daughter felt on his mind.

The girl seemed like she had gotten her fill of the situation, and turned to give her brother the toy back. He took it in a swift motion, hiding the object behind his back and sticking a tongue out for her.

“Don’t do that!” Draco called in a sudden wave of authority he didn’t know he possessed, a weird mix of firmness and softness, a contradiction in itself. He had heard Harry use it with James a few times. Maybe that was his subconscious copying of what a decent dad should be like.

As the children walked up the steps to get back inside the house, both slightly shaking from having been exposed to the outside chill without any appropriate clothes, Draco remembered the words the older of the boys had said. Hogwarts Express. Were they in January, like they had been before, only years in advance?

“Don’t you have classes too? Why aren’t you getting ready?” He asked the boy as he passed him. He turned to look at Draco.

“No?” He asked, sounding as if Draco was supposed to know the answer. Which he probably was. “My classes only start tomorrow.”

“But the Hogwarts Express leaves today,” Malfoy argued back. The boy eyed him quizzically, deepening the furrow of his brows.

“I’m ten.”

“Oh,” if the aim was to not raise suspicions and find a way back to their time quickly, Draco was failing miserably. The boy’s face was stained with a look of suspicion, with his grey eyes – like Draco’s – reduced to slips that reminded him of Granger’s expression whenever she was solving a problem at the DMLE. “Is just that –“ You’re tall, he almost said, but that was not an observation a father should make about his own son, who he supposedly saw every day. “I got confused… go inside and warm yourself… huh… son.”

Great fucking job, Draco. The boy eyed Malfoy a last time, letting it clear he wasn’t convinced by a single word he heard but complied with the request nonetheless. How am I going to find out their names? The new worry perturbed the adrenaline-based focus Draco had built for himself.

Following behind them, a new harmony seemed to have been reached inside the strange house.

The older boy had placed his trunks by the fireplace and hand-carried the numerous boxes of artifacts to a room adjacent to the Drawing Room. Hermione seemed to have recomposed herself and was walking around the house, eyeing the corners in what Draco noticed to be an attempt to find clues of where and when they were. She held the hand of the sniffling boy who had previously been lying on the ground, as he accompanied her.

She hesitated at seeing the three of them enter but recomposed herself before it was apparent to the children. The boy who had been with Draco shot his identical twin a dirty look.

“Don’t do that,” Draco adverted in that Potter tone again, sensing the impending fight that could happen between the two of them.

“Hah!” Hermione’s cheer interrupted the interaction and all eyes turned to her.

“Sorry, is just that I found what I was looking for,” she tried to sound natural but her smile was a little bit too forced. In her hands, she held a rectangular-shaped, small, black object that Draco couldn’t identify.

“You’re always losing your phone…” the boy holding her hand said, in a slightly amused tone. Phone? Draco had heard that word before. It was a muggle device, he remembered that, but the specifics of it were lost on him.

“Dad, it’s 10 already, when will we leave?” The oldest of the children asked from the hallway.

“In a bit… son,” Draco sounded unsure of what to call the children again, but that other boy hardly minded it, running to wait by his belongings. Nobody in their right mind would be that excited to go to school. Granger’s child, indeed.

The pecking of an owl interrupted their conversation.

Granger walked to the window where a serious-looking, grey owl was waiting patiently to be answered. She took the letter attached to the animal and, as she read it, Draco feared she her eyes would widen to the point that they would fall from their sockets.

“Apparently I had a meeting with Kingsley today, now,” she told him, forgetting to sound natural. Draco looked to the children to see their reactions but, thankfully, they had all found something else to busy themselves with, even the boy still holding Hermione’s hand, who had taken the said phone and was touching it in sporadic motions and Draco got even more confused about the object’s use.

“What will you do?” He asked in return, feeling safe enough to voice what he was thinking more freely.

“I don’t even know what the meeting was about, what I’m supposed to know, or even what I work for,” Hermione voiced what they both already knew, sounding almost desperate. Typical Granger. “I’m going to write to them and say that Pollux fell and I had to take care of it. That will have to do.”

Draco saw the way the engines of her brain started to work as her eyes became more focused and her posture, straighter. He paused. Pollux? The boy with the bandaged leg was looking up to Hermione as she searched for paper in the many drawers of their furniture. Aurora and Pollux; two down, two to go.

Hermione found what she was looking for and, taking a muggle pen from her pocket (Draco knew what they were because Hermione, in her typical fashions, had abandoned the use of feathers and announced to whoever was willing to hear that pens were much superior, yes, they weren’t prickly and they didn’t even stain your hands!). She wrote a quick reply and attached it to the bird before sending it back.

“Here, this is how we’re going to do this,” Draco neared her and spoke the words in a low tone. “I’m going to take him,” he nodded in the direction of the Drawing Room where the oldest boy stood, “and you’re going to gather as much information as you can.”

To his happiness and surprise, Hermione didn’t disagree, only nodded her agreement. He was further surprised by her next words.

“Good luck.”

“Likewise.”

London, January 2 – Monday, 2006.

Present times / future selves.

It felt like Hermione had been falling for an eternity before she finally landed, right on her bum.

“Ouch,” she took her time to open her eyes and stand up. She felt the telltale cold before she even eyed the place, and instantly knew where they were.

“The Department of Mysteries,” Draco voiced it before she could. He offered Hermione a hand and helped her up.

They were in one of those rooms reserved for the storage of dangerous and/or unstable artifacts. There was only a metal table placed in the center of the space, and on it rested the necklace they had touched before being transported there.

The place, the cold, the necklace, it all came crashing down to Hermione. Whatever trance its magic had put on them before, it was long gone and her memories washed over her in full force.

“Oh, Merlin,” she called, and Draco seemed as stunned as she was, also eyeing the necklace.

“That’s the…”

“The Teleporting Necklace, yes,” she referred to the object in the way they did back when they were still working on the case.

Many years before, Hermione had worked with Draco in a case to unlock the ancient spells placed in that relic of the ‘Ancient and Noble House of Black’, as Draco had once referred to them, sending Hermione into a fit of laughter. The technology they got from it, after successfully cracking its riddles, truly revolutionized the way Aurors worked.

But, more than that (at least to Hermione), that was the time she got closest to her would-be husband. Somewhere along the long, late hours, they spent together working on the spells, he became more than Draco Malfoy, her annoying co-worker, and turned into Draco Malfoy, her friend. Malfoy, the prejudiced bully from school was forgotten as they progressed in their friendship. After a few days from leaving the Ministry too late, and having a few celebratory drinks to celebrate their progress, Draco Malfoy, her friend, became Draco, her situationship, that in turn turned into Draco, her husband.

Never mind the specifics, that was the initial point of their relationship. A time in which everything felt so simple and when it was easy to be happy, easy to let go of her resentments, and even easier to fall in love with that blond git.

“Do you think we’re…”

“Back at the beginning?” Hermione finished for him. Draco nodded.

“Wouldn’t we remember if we had gotten back in time? Wouldn’t we have recognized ourselves?” Draco asked as they neared the necklace, too afraid to touch it again. Hermione levitated it, before securing it in a glass box she kept inside her purse, for the event of such occurrences. She stored that artifact inside the same bag.

“I believe we’re in another timeline, entirely,” Hermione answered, remembering her past studies on the magic of the necklace. It would take one in need to another time and space and, by doing that, it would start a different timeline altogether. Like the muggle physicists once theorized that every choice one made would create a different version of their universe, the necklace accessed those infinite possibilities and gave the person in need a clean slate, if it felt like it.

Draco must have remembered those studies, as he had been there during them, and started to shake his head repeatedly.

“Oh, sweet Salazar… It’s my fault! All I wanted to do was run away, this morning…” he paced around the room, speaking more to himself than to Hermione. She stopped his nervous steps, cupping his face with both of her hands and making him look at her.

“Draco Malfoy,” he swallowed, knowing she only used his full name when she wanted to say something serious – or was angry at him. “If you’re to blame, so am I. I wasn’t too thrilled this morning, too. But, if the necklace took the children as threats to our safety, it would have ‘rescued’ us years ago.”

Hermione remembered their endless sleepless nights when the children were younger, especially when the twins were born. It was a hard period of their lives. Scorpius was two and entirely keen on getting his way with everything – and throwing a tantrum when he didn’t – and the twins were being their normal, newborn selves: crying when they were sad and uncomfortable – and crying when they were happy, too. Both she and Draco really questioned their choices in the first few days (and months) of their new reality (Hermione had especially doubted her decision of not keeping house elves), but, soon enough, they found a new routine and the three boys flourished more as each day passed. Each first smile, first step, first word, and even their first falls, were reasons for celebration and immense joy. Happiness came easy and flowed with time.

“No, that wasn’t us,” Hermione spoke with certainty. “If I had to guess, it was both of our desperations and the matching feelings of people here. In this timeline.”

“Why do you think so?”

“They should’ve been here, don’t you think? That’s where we began. They should be doing their case, analyzing the necklace. Maybe they did, and it activated the spells. That’s why we’re here and we’re –“

“Alone,” Draco finished for her, nodding in agreement. “That makes sense. Do you think you can undo it?”

“Absolutely,” Hermione patted her purse. “Should be easy enough, in theory. But I still have to go through all the locks again so I can bend it at our will.”

Draco hummed. “Should be easier now that we already know the way.”

“I’m counting on it,” Hermione truly was, but she still remembered the numerous puzzles they had to solve. Memory wasn’t enough, it would still take them a few days. She remembered their children and hoped that, whoever was there with them, would take good care of her most precious people.

Her heart clenched when she remembered the way she left them. Scorpius was so excited to go back… Would Pollux still be crying for her? Would her other self know how to calm him down? Would she be gentle to Castor’s delicate feelings? Would she know how to interact with the peculiar little trouble that was Aurora?

Trust yourself and worry about the things you can control; her brain reminded her and Hermione took a few deep breaths. She would need to trust herself, and the sooner she started to unlock the spells, the sooner she would be back with her family.

“Let’s go?” She asked Draco, already moving toward the door. He followed.

“Where are we going?”

Right. They didn’t have their house yet.

“My old flat?” They exchanged a few nods while walking through the dark and cold halls of the Department of Mysteries. Draco had a comforting hand laid on her lower back, and Hermione smiled softly at him.

“Hey guys,” a voice sounded as they stepped out of the lift they had taken. Draco almost jumped far from where he stood close to Hermione. Harry.

Hermione’s friend met them at the Ministry’s atrium.

“I was just leaving too. Want to join me for a few drinks?” He asked so hopefully and with his typical smile that Hermione felt bad for turning him down.

“I still need to finish a few reports today, I’m sorry but maybe another day?” She offered and Harry’s expression faltered, but he seemed conformed.

“You have to stop taking work home, Hermione. It does you no good to work this much…”

“I’ll try, Harry. I promise I will. But today I really can’t,” she tried not to sound exasperated as she hurried her steps toward the floos.

“Sorry mate, can’t do it today, too. I promised my mother I would meet her,” it was Draco’s turn to lie.  

“Oh, I didn’t know. It’s okay then –“

Harry paused on his steps as he turned to look at Draco. Hermione froze, and Draco had a similar reaction. Were they going to get caught that soon? A bit disappointing, really. All spacetime reactions aside.

“What?” Draco asked as Harry continued to eye him curiously.

“I thought you had come in a suit today. Guess my memory deceived me,” was Harry’s explanation. Hermione turned to Draco and he did look a bit too casual to be in the Ministry, with khaki, tailored pants and a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His shoes were black and polished and his hair was slightly longer than it used to be years ago, with a few whiter strands to it, too. Hermione was certainly dressed differently than she should be, but she was wearing clothes appropriate enough and Harry’s attention only spun so far.

“I shrunk my jacket. I was feeling a bit hot,” Draco reasoned, trying to dismiss the other man’s suspicions.

“Hot? In the Department of Mysteries?” Harry questioned, insistently.

“Yes, do you wish to control my body temperature now, Potter?” It had been sometime considerable time since Hermione had seen the argumentative side of Draco (about a week, when Theo had nagged him during dinner), and Hermione suppressed a laugh.

“Did you two eat anything down there?” The couple, who had resumed their walking, turned to Harry and both frowned their eyebrows in twin expressions. At some point along the years, one had gotten the habit from the other, and the original owner of the stare had been forgotten.

“Is just that,” Harry continued, turning to Draco and moving his hands in disconnected movements in front of his own stomach. “You look a bit…”

Hermione let a snicker escape her throat. Draco turned red. Yes, her husband had aged into a slight dad-body. Hermione loved it, both the look his newfound bulkiness gave him and the feel of bigger arms, pectoral, and thighs against and around her; and Draco also didn’t usually have problems with it. That was one of the unusual occurrences.

“That’s a very impolite comment to make, Potter –“ Draco voiced Harry’s name as he used to do during school. He was taking a step toward the other man when Hermione put herself in the middle of the two. Harry was smiling, cheekily.

Hermione gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek and smiled back, trying to seem reassuring. Draco regained his composure behind her.

“See you tomorrow, Harry.”

“Bye, Hermione. See you, Malfoy,” he spoke the last part eyeing over her shoulder. Draco didn’t reply, only turned and made his way to the floos.

Hermione and he kept a respectable distance, as they would do if they were still mere co-workers. Each took their floo to a magical spot close to her old flat (and current, in that timeline, if they were correct), and apparated the rest of the way there.

Thankfully, as Hermione landed inside her home and Draco outside (as the ward wasn’t familiar with him, yet), she noticed that her decoration was the same as it used to be. Picture frames with photos of her with Harry and Ron, Ginny, and her parents adorned the walls and a faint meow sounded from the adjacent room.

“Crookshanks!” She almost cried as the old creature curled to her legs. She lifted her old friend in her arms and hugged him tightly, to his utter annoyance. “I had missed you…”

Crookshanks had died years before when Scorpius and the twins were still babies. Hermione let her face drown in his dense fur, bringing him impossibly close. Up until then, she thought such possibility of seeing the half-kneazle again was non-existent.

“Oh, right, he’s still around,” Draco said as he entered the flat through the front doors, remembering the unlocking spells Hermione had taught him so many years before when his nights spent at her companion became more frequent.

Although he tried to sound uninterested, Draco moved to pet the orange animal with affection. Not familiar with him as it was the other way around, Crookshanks bit the man’s hand.

“Ouch,” Draco swung his hand around, trying to dull the sharp pain. “Unstable creature…”

Hermione giggled as if she was a child.

It was a weird feeling, being back in time. On one hand, her mind pulsed with the worry of maybe messing something up in this timeline (or on hers), and with worry for her children. Were their other selves really there or were they alone? Surely, their neighbors and family friends would rescue them, if that was the case. Right?

On the other hand, concerning the things she could control, the feeling of relieving such a nice time of her life was indescribable, and it was thrilling to relieve those memories, seeing people like they used to be…

Hermione let go of her old pet who was now twisting in her hold. He hissed once in Draco’s direction before making his way back to the room he had come from. She watched the scene affectionately.

Draco, who was walking around the room and taking in the details before him, probably deep in his own daydreams, turned around and gave his wife a comforting smile that made her heart warm and all worries disappear, at least for a moment. All would work out, as it did for them, so many times.

“Shall we?” He eventually asked attention turned to her purse. Hermione nodded and placed the box containing the necklace on her counter, and they started working, the same as they had so many years before.