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“Wait just a minute, Lucy… did you and your sister clean your bathroom?”
One of her two thirteen-year-olds skidded to a halt just inside the front door, already looking guilty. Hermione sighed. That answered it all.
“Yes,” said Lucy, with an admirably terrible attempt at a confident delivery. Lyra could have done better. Hermione hoped Lyra enjoyed that little advantage and kept it to herself, rather than teach her secrets to her twin. Lyra wasn’t the charitable sort. Hermione was probably in luck - on that count, at least.
“Your clothes?”
“Yes.”
“The shower?”
“Yes.”
“The ring in the tub?”
“Yes.”
“The -”
“Hermione, just let them go,” said Draco from the hall. “They cleaned. Lyra!”
“Coming!” shouted their other daughter, sounding as if she’d been called down nine times instead of once. Hermione gritted her teeth as Lyra’s heels clacked loudly down the staircase.
“Hang on, young lady, open that purse.”
“Mum -”
“Hermione -”
Ignoring protests (as usual), Hermione fished into the bag Lyra was trying her hardest to only partially open. Fabric hit her fingers straight away. So there it was, right on top. Not a surprise. She pulled up a lacy camisole and gave her kid a deadpan stare.
“Not a chance.”
“Oh, come on, Mum -”
Draco lifted the top from Hermione and, to his slight credit, did wince. A little. “Sorry, sweetie. Your mum’s right. This is a little too old for you.”
Hermione bit back a scoff. Lyra had been wearing tops like that for well over a year, sneaking them out under more modest clothing - or smuggled to freedom in her bag, where she could change into it once she was safely out of the house. And come to that… Hermione eyed Lucy with more scrutiny, spying a strip of scalloped lace beneath her tee.
“Nope,” she declared. “Back upstairs, both of you. Change. And while you do, I’m going to inspect this bathroom of yours.”
Amidst dramatic heaving sighs and protests, both girls stomped back up the stairs. Hermione faced Draco, arms firmly crossed.
“You could help a little, you know. Where did they even get those clothes?”
“Honey, you’re just so hard on them. They’re kids. They’re supposed to skim the cleaning and wear whatever’s… whatever the other girls wear. You’re stuck back in your old school mentality, the one -”
Oh, Hermione knew the one. She knew perfectly well what her husband meant. That she couldn’t understand how a trendy, fashionable girl would act or know what they would want. That a Hermione could never understand a Pansy or a Daphne.
She only wanted her daughters to know their value didn’t come from wearing skinny strips of lace when they were barely thirteen. That while they had nothing to be ashamed of when it came to their bodies, they should still be proud of everything else they had to offer the world - to choose to showcase other things.
Merlin’s beard, they grew up fast enough as it was. Hermione didn’t need them being mistaken for sixth years. She wished they’d hurry up and get spotty, and then instantly felt like a horrible parent for wanting it in the first place.
Scorpius sprinted past with Harry’s son Albus hot on his heels. Hermione flattened against the wall just in time to avoid being bowled over by her ten-year-old. Draco coughed a laugh into one hand, and hollered, “Where’s the fire?”
“Out back!” shouted Scorp, which made Hermione blanche.
“Watch out for the peacocks,” Draco said, unconcerned.
“Can you -” she started to say and changed her mind. “I’ll go look. You go check on the girls.”
Draco shook his head ruefully, as if this effort could possibly be a waste of time. “You know the manor won’t actually let a fire -”
Hermione was already halfway out the back door, swearing under her breath as she sprinted. “Scorpius!”
She was rather in shape for this kind of thing and she dodged an incoming peacock with a well-timed hurdle. She got lots of practice, particularly during the summers. Scorp wouldn’t attend Hogwarts until the fall, but the girls were home on their summer holidays: holidays that used to feel painfully short and now seemed to last a bloody eternity.
Children weren’t supposed to use magic before age seventeen, even in wizarding homes. It was incumbent on their parents to enforce this law, and Hermione would be damned if they’d falter on her watch. Scorpius didn’t think anything of this, as he was perfectly capable of starting fires and founding three-legged toad colonies beneath his bed without a wand of his own. The girls simply whinged and moaned all summer, forced to revert to doing things in a more… primitive way.
They’d learned not to refer to this as the ‘Muggle way’ in that same derisive tone of voice. Hermione had grounded them both for a week.
Hermione also gave the house elves a full summer holiday each year, something that had taken them time to adjust to. They spent it perusing the other Malfoy properties and pretending to enjoy a rest, while Hermione pretended to ignore that they were probably working the entire time anyway.
Her edict had served two purposes: a well-earned rest (should they choose to indulge in one) for their employed, salaried house elves, and a summer of learning responsibility, basic hygiene, and respect for one’s things for all three of her children.
Well, four. Her husband struggled with it, too. Which only proved that it was important to do each year, in her opinion.
Without a doubt, Lucy and Lyra struggled the most. Scorpius kept his room and things oddly tidy. Not immaculate, by any stretch. But Scorp seemed to want to know how and where to find things with an alarming consistency. Part of Hermione didn’t want to know just how well-organised her chaotic son might be underneath, or what he was using it for.
Starting fires in the lawn, for one. Hermione tried to follow her own rules in the summer and hardly ever reached for her wand. It was good for morale (not hers, particularly, but one must make sacrifices when parenting).
Faced with her son’s latest summertime initiative, Hermione mentally scrambled for how to extinguish a fire without her wand. They did have a garden hose coiled up by the house. It was clear across the grounds, but she could summon it. But it was only a soaker hose for the vegetable garden she fruitlessly tried to convince the girls to nurture on occasion, allowing water to dribble out through a hundred tiny holes. Hardly useful in a fire, and if she were going to summon a hose, she might as well just hose the damn thing in magic instead.
Pressed for an immediate solution, she ground her teeth and went for her wand with the ever-present feeling of failure - both that she’d needed it in the moment and that it was happening in front of her son in the first place.
“Aguamenti,” she hissed, more irritable by the second.
Scorp whinged, “Aw, mum…” with his little hands in disappointed fists by his side and Hermione had a perverse urge to ask if he was burning an effigy. She occasionally felt the need to exorcise some demons herself.
If Draco didn’t have the girls sorted, she might wring someone’s neck by the end of the day. And it was only Tuesday.
* * *
Scratch that. Reverse it. Hermione emerged into her own foyer to hear raised voices, one of which belonged to her husband - and it was the voice she always found sexy. The “dammit, if you don’t listen to your mum, you’re going to have a bad night,” voice. Wide-eyed, she peered cautiously around the corner.
Someone might have a good night, at any rate.
She was not subtle enough - or maybe Draco was too attuned to her lurking to eavesdrop when he used that voice.
“Hermione,” he said, without turning, “these girls are unbelievable. Absolutely mental, if they think they’re leaving this house with their bathroom in the state it’s in.”
What was happening? Had she fallen into an alternate universe? She was still wearing knickers, which meant she was here and not in the universe where Draco might use that voice full-time.
“You, ah…” she started, unaccustomed to being this flummoxed. “You don’t think they did a good job?”
“They didn’t even start!” he roared, and on the stairs, two identical teen faces flinched back towards hanging wall sconces and one dumbfounded portrait too close to the action. The inhabitants of other portraits were already gathering along the walls.
“They tried to hide it, and no - before you ask, not with magic. They shoved the whole mess into their own shower stall and thought I wouldn’t pull back the curtain! You should see the state of the tile!”
Well, thought Hermione, on any other occasion, he wouldn’t have. But who was she to look a gift disciplinarian in the mouth? And she knew perfectly well the state of their bathroom floor. It was revolting.
“You must think your mum and I are pretty thick,” said Draco, and Hermione patted him on the shoulder absently. This was a useless path to traverse. They did, in fact, think Draco and Hermione were thick. They would probably continue to think so until they were… twenty, on the low end. If the pair of them were lucky.
Scorpius had also begun to eavesdrop, drawn to the sound of scoldings like a moth to a flame. His eyes grew wider and wider, listening to his dad excoriate his set of indignant big sisters.
Hermione was struck with a moment of brilliance, the sort that seemed to come less and less frequently as her own offspring sapped all energy and ingenuity from her like a pack of needy puffskeins.
Her son’s face still bore the injured, betrayed look that so often happened when Hermione cut his grand afternoon plot off at the knees. And if Draco were taking on the unforgiving mantle of teen-girl-supervision…
“Scorp, want to go to Thorpe Park? You and Al?”
The entire foyer shut up and gaped in her direction. Scorpius crept out into the open, closely followed by Albus. Openly torn between dubious trust and enthusiasm, they exchanged no less than four glances before looking at Hermione and nodding.
“Yeah. Yeah, alright.”
Lyra and Lucy simultaneously exploded in protests. What?! It’s not fair, how come he gets to go, why can’t they ever do anything fun, gods, they hate them, and on and on. Hermione tuned it out easier than she’d ever done.
It was oddly freeing.
She beamed, looking up at Draco. “Right. I’m going to take Scorp. You’ve got this?”
Shocked into silence, he nodded, before regaining himself. “That bathroom will be clean in no time. The girls can go have plenty of fun, too - after I check their work.”
He let a cautionary glare linger, matching the twins scowl for scowl.
This was sounding better and better, in her mind. She loved the Muggle theme park. It had been years since she’d been, and she knew Scorp had never seen it. Had Albus? Had Harry ever taken him? Maybe, but so what if he had? They’d have a fun afternoon if it killed them.
Grinning broadly, she slapped her wand on the entrance table and swiped up her bag in its place. “Come along, then, boys! Let’s ride some Muggle roller coasters!”
* * *
Draco caught himself grinding his teeth for the fourth time and vowed to find something to gnaw on instead. An apple, perhaps. Anything, really; just something organic and edible for a change, because at this rate he was going to have a mouthful of nubs to chew with.
These girls… no wonder Hermione was always on edge with them. They were incorrigible little liars. Both of them. They fed off each other in ways he’d never seen, intricate efforts of layering lie atop lie to make Draco second-guess his very presence on the planet.
The bathroom looked lovely, compared to this morning! Sure, it wasn’t as good as Mum would do, but was anything? He knew what they meant. She set impossible standards! They were set up to fail. It wasn’t fair!
Draco leaned against the door trim with one ankle crossed, watching in silence.
In his first thirty minutes, he’d learned the more he engaged with them, the more they latched on and evolved the story. It was wild to see in action, like watching a pride of lions hunt in the African savannah after sensing vulnerability.
If he just stood here, wordlessly surveying their progress, they got visibly anxious. Their tactics weren’t working. They had to adapt on the fly.
His girls were stunningly (though perhaps not; a debate for later) adaptable, intelligent and cunning and flexible in their excuses. Their meagre efforts. Their halfhearted attempts to check the box he’d set before them.
“Cut the dramatics! You got it all from me,” said Draco, who regretted it. Better not to inform Lucy and Lyra of all that.
They were truly appalling at manual labour. Draco couldn’t fault them for this. He, too, would receive poor marks in this area. But he’d receive an O for effort, and his twin daughters… well.
He crunched another bite of apple to keep his jaw from grinding into overtime.
Without a doubt, he was seeing a new side to his precious little angels. Lucy’s gorgeous doe-eyed pleading was not going to resonate this time. Lyra’s blend of self-righteous pomp and gaslighting insistence that she was right would get her nowhere.
By now, Draco was invested in this. He was personally offended that they thought they could get away with it.
That they’d been doing so for aeons only fuelled him. He would not admit how his own complacency had allowed things to this point.
He’d stomach his failure internally, like a proper parent.
Crookshanks poked his orange head into the room and scanned the activity. Both girls, on hands and knees, scrubbed the tile grout with Muggle toothbrushes, groaning in disgust (openly and loudly, which weren’t quite the same, in Draco’s opinion).
Crooks sniffed imperiously and Lucy looked up.
The love in her eyes almost melted Draco. Almost. Because he loved this absurd half-Kneazle just as much as Hermione did, and the kids did, too.
“Luce… did we tell you girls that we’ve thought about getting a kitten? Well, probably a pair of kittens,” he continued, as both girls gasped and flung their eyes up from the floor to meet his with unhinged hope and optimism shining from every orifice. “Kittens are meant to come in pairs, you know. But…”
His gaze surveyed their progress, unimpressed. “Lyra, when was the last time you cleaned Crooks’s litter box?”
Her hazel eyes widened and he knew the answer.
“Lucy?”
Lyra’s twin swallowed hard. Her jaw tightened exactly like her mother’s did, and Draco fought back a smile.
“Dad, without magic, it’s…”
He lifted his eyebrows. “It’s… what?”
Gross? Dirty? Absolutely abhorrently disgusting? Draco had to agree. He’d never clean that box without magic, but he also hadn’t been begging for another part-Kneazle since he could walk. If the girls wanted one so badly, they had to respect the effort that went into it.
“See, if you both had just done what you’re always told to do, we could have been playing with two kittens right now.”
He tsked his tongue and smothered a smile.
* * *
While they pondered how their atrocious efforts had led them astray, Draco felt compelled to milk things a little.
Perhaps his daughters had learned this from him; perhaps not. He’d debate that later, too. It would have to be a private debate, because he knew exactly what Hermione would say about it.
He allowed Lucy and Lyra seven whole minutes for snacks and water.
Part of him (okay, a decent chunk) wished he was at Thorpe Park. He and Hermione went when they were dating, maybe even before they’d hit that official marker of a pre-relationship yet. It had been at least fifteen years. Maybe closer to twenty.
Seeing how wild and free she’d been with the Muggle-made contraptions of speed and general danger had sent Draco toppling head over heels in love with her. It had been less than two weeks of dating, in his memory - something that could be flawed, in the mysterious blurring of time, but didn’t feel that way. It had been a formative moment for him with her, an immersive admiration and envy and desire, all wound up together. He’d wanted to be like her and be with her, and be the kind of person who would be at this park with her any day of the year. Every day. All the days.
Why hadn’t they gone back? Why hadn’t it been a regular thing? What a waste. He resolved to do better, and crunched another bite off his apple.
They’d take Lyra and Lucy the next time, and laugh privately at the horror and obsession the twins would have with their hair, and with their makeup when the warm sun came out and began to sweat it off, and how they’d try to blend in with the Muggles. Poorly, he had no doubt, but they’d try.
Hermione’s drive to assimilate with the non-wizarding population was a sound one. The more he thought about it in this way, the clearer Draco could see it. Sure, when he considered the need to blend in against the backdrop of Hogwarts or of working within the Ministry, it felt like a superfluous focus to have.
But set against Thorpe Park, and all the fun they could have there as a family, no wands included…
He could do better here, with that aim. He could. He could be more supportive of the non-magical agenda. After all, their family shouldn't hinge on having one in each of their hands as if it were glued there.
They could spend lovely time together as a family, wands down. Set on side tables, abandoned for an hour or two at a time. Hermione usually asked for longer than that, and he could back that edict. He could. He would.
Watching his girls toil miserably cleaning their own loo and floor tiles, Draco was no duffer. He knew it would be hardest for his perfect, precious popkinses. And generally speaking, he was motivated to make life easy for his children.
He loved them with all his heart. He wanted their path laid out, with minimal mysteries or obstacles. He wanted them to have confidence in what their life could (and should) be.
Although… thinking of unanticipated looming obstacles, Draco reflected on how Scorp’s stomach had turned over on him without warning while practising Quidditch with Draco in the yard.
His son had been embarrassed about this and Draco had obediently kept it to himself, equally certain it was a phase. As his flying grew more confident, a ten-year-old would naturally try bolder manoeuvres. Sometimes those didn’t settle well in his stomach, but Scorp would probably adjust. And Hermione never flew, rarely bothering to spectate Quaffle practice.
But remembering those Muggle roller coasters, Draco had a flash of foreboding.
“Dad, come on,” Lyra whinged, hair askew. “Isn’t this clean?”
Eh. If the metric were how Hermione would do it, they were beginning to approach ‘clean.’ If the metric were how the house elves would do it, it most certainly wasn’t.
But it was adequate, he supposed. He sighed and pushed off the door frame. The girls cheered wildly, splashing dirty rags into their buckets.
“Time to clean out the pantry!”
He grinned through the chorus of groans, his two daughters sounding like a horde of at least seven.
In truth, the manor had four separate pantries. The house elves would be vexed at the interference, but Draco imagined it would be good for his girls to get a better grasp of how the manor ran. Well, that and to see just how fortunate they really were.
The creeping knowledge that his girls might be spoiled had begun to marinate.
This impression solidified the second time one of them (Lucy, this time) tried to merely shuttle things about on the shelves, dust a few things, and call it done - as if Draco wasn’t going to come in and inspect this job, too. There was no shower curtain here but the point remained.
He slammed the door and both jumped. “Do you think I’m gullible or stupid?”
Lyra and Lucy turned wide, alarmed eyes on him in symmetry. It could almost be funny, if his question wasn’t completely real.
“It has to be one or the other! Either you think I’m easy enough to trick, or you think I’m too thick to need tricking at all! Which is it?”
A squeak from behind his heel caused him to leap to the side, just before a trio of rats streaked through the doorway.
“Seven hells!” said Draco, swallowed completely by his daughters’ shrieking. Breathing hard, he steadied himself with a wall sconce.
“Scorpius!” screamed Lucy, either forgetting her brother was gone or assigning enthusiastic blame.
“What does Scorp have to do with this?”
“He’s been training them -” said Lyra.
“Training them?!”
“He thinks he can train them to fetch him sweets in the night, but I thought he only had two,” said Lucy.
“Two rats or two sweets?”
“Two rats,” said Lucy. “He has way more than two sweets.”
“He definitely only had two,” said Lyra.
Draco was feeling rather snippy. “And how do two rats become three, ladies?”
And of course it wouldn’t stop at three. A total of three bloody rats had never existed anywhere, ever. It defied the basic laws of nature.
“Where does he keep them? In the sodding pantry?”
Rats housed in the pantry would be… unfortunate. Lyra shrugged, looking (for once in her life) genuinely befuddled about a plot in her general vicinity. Lucy was no better.
“As long as they aren’t in your room, right, girls? No problem at all so long as they’re not in your room. I’ll be back to check this pantry in half an hour. If you’re done, we’ll have lunch and then you’ll start on the others.”
“Dad!”
* * *
The portraits weren’t hard to locate. Their inhabitants had been following Draco’s progress with open curiosity. He couldn’t blame them much. He supposed things did get dull. But it was time to make themselves useful, for a change.
“How big a rat colony does my son have, at this point?”
This sentence was not one Draco had ever imagined saying. Awkward glances passed between his ancestors.
“Might I remind you that your allegiance is to me, the lord of the manor? You can back Scorp when he comes of age. Now, give me everything you’ve got.”
“Well, Your Grace, given that you didn’t know about it at all, you can hardly get your knickers in a twist about it now.”
“Hebrides, don’t be sarcastic. How many rats are scurrying around my bloody manor at night?”
“At least a round dozen, I’d say,” said Marielle with a shudder. “Though it’s nothing to what he’s been doing with the peacocks, from what I can see out the bay window over the eastern lawn.”
“The peacocks? What’s he doing with the peacocks?!”
“Draco,” said Septimus, “perhaps you ought to check behind my portrait in the south wing study.”
“...Why?”
He was already on his feet. The portrait inhabitants shuttled from painting to painting en masse, scurrying not unlike a colony of rats.
The answer to his question (which had nothing to do with peacocks) came when he ripped Septimus’s primary portrait off the wall. There was a full nest behind it, but it wasn’t housing rodents. It housed sweets.
Which meant it also housed ants.
“Scorpius!” Draco bellowed, also forgetting his son was gone.
Lucy and Lyra, predictably abandoning their latest chore, tittered from the doorway.
* * *
Hermione didn’t know where things had gone so wrong. She’d had the best of intentions. Things had certainly started off well enough, the two boys as eager to be in her presence as she’d seen since Scorpius was a toddler and attached to her at the knee.
She delighted in the feeling. She was, once again, the fun parent - even if only for an afternoon. It felt brilliant.
They arrived at Thorpe Park and she restrained herself from giving a(nother) lesson about Muggle money. She bought the boys frozen Icees, loaded with sugar and caffeine and everything else they tried to restrict at home. They had donuts and churros and cotton candy.
Hermione drew the line at the round chocolate-covered candies when Albus had nearly swallowed one whole on the Whirly Twirl, but that had really just been basic survival instead of Hermione squashing their fun like usual. Harry would be cross with her if Al choked.
Scorpius was gnawing on the saltiest pretzel Hermione had ever seen when they got in line for the first big roller coaster. This one had loops and she revelled in the excitement on the boys’ faces. They’d never done anything like it before and Hermione felt a pang of guilt for being here without Draco. He ought to be along for this and she vowed to save some of the big rides for the following weekend. They could come back. They would come back. Draco could have his own firsts with Scorp here.
Albus sucked the remaining soda through the straw of his gigantic souvenir cup. It scraped along the bottom, pulling up nothing but air and he smacked his lips. Hermione smiled. Scorp still had some left in his. It wouldn’t last him long but they came with free refills.
At the front of the queue, they set their belongings in a little cubby and took their designated seats. Safety belts were fastened and steel bars rested into place, and both boys were grinning ear to ear. It was contagious to her, too, and anticipatory adrenaline flooded her.
“Remember not to bite your tongue,” Hermione said urgently, unable to stop one meagre bit of parental advice as the car began to move up, up, up the steep hill.
And then…
Then, it all went downhill. Literally, in both senses of the word. The car tipped forward into a corkscrew turn and by the third stomach-wrenching curve, Scorpius had grown oddly silent. Hermione chanced a look to the side without pulling a muscle in her neck and her son was gritting his teeth, eyes scrunched shut, little fingers white-knuckling the steel bar.
Uh-oh.
Nothing to be done about it, though, and she clenched her own jaw against the momentum of the ride. No tongue-biting for her, either. She’d done that once and only once. It was horrible.
Shrieks erupted from the car behind them without warning and Hermione looked again. Her son’s lunch and every snack, soda and sweet since was ejecting from his miserable mouth - and flying directly backward.
Then came the next turn.
* * *
Hermione was able to cajole him onto a water ride next, which she considered a stroke of brilliance that she would not brag about.
Then she bought him no less than five souvenirs and one giant stuffed animal he sniffled into the entire way out.
* * *
Draco had nearly finished with Lucy and Lyra when he remembered about the laundry. Fine; one final thing. He refused to let himself feel guilty about the way this day had drawn out. He refused to bend to the incessant whinging, their dramatic protests, their eventual tantrums.
In fact, the tantrums only helped his resolve. They ought to have known better.
Lucy surprised him by taking the initiative on the laundry, but not in the way he’d prefer. She flung herself in his path, blocking the twins’ bedroom doorway. Draco lifted an eyebrow.
“We’ll do it, Dad. We’ll do it.”
“What’s the catch?” Draco asked.
“No catch,” said Lyra. “We’ll do it.”
But there was always a catch. Draco pushed forward, brushing past the physical barricade of his daughters.
“Dad -”
“Stupid or gullible, Lyra?”
Lucy only made matters worse for herself by lifting her hamper in her own arms - presumably showing her intention to get it done, but all it did was elevate it closer to Draco’s face.
A flash of green lace caught his eye. A familiar flash of familiar green… and very familiar lace.
He hooked one finger in it and raised it up, letting it dangle before his mortified daughter.
“I bought this for your mother.”
“Ew, Dad -”
“How do you think it got in her drawer, Lucy? Do you imagine your mum picking out her own knickers? Because when she does, they don’t look like this,” said Draco.
“Dad!”
“What else are you ‘borrowing’ from your mum? Let’s see.”
He plucked the hamper from Lucy’s arms and set it down on the unmade bed. “I bought this… and this.” He rifled a bit more. “I love seeing your mum in this, but now…”
“Dad, stop!”
“And don’t think that means you can have it,” said Draco. “Or this pair. Or that one there. And I know you have two laundry baskets in here. Go and fetch the other one, and don’t make me search the room.”
He knew he would be, though.
* * *
He felt the magic shift when Hermione and Scorpius returned home. There was no indication of Albus and they must have dropped him back at the Potters’ on the way.
Draco popped his head out. “Do you know what thieving little monsters these two are?”
His words died when he saw his son. “Ah… not a good day?”
Hermione grimaced and gave a quick, silent shake of the head. “Scorp is going to go lie down for a bit. I might have, er, overdone it on the sweets.”
Draco waited until his son had vanished down the hall. “Speaking of sweets, he’s been hoarding them. He’s quite the animal trainer, our son.”
“You found the three-legged toads under his bed?”
“The what?”
Confused, Hermione paused. “He’s got a half dozen toads under his bed.”
Draco hadn’t even made it into Scorp’s room yet. Just how many more colonies of animals were in their house?
“No, he’s been training rats. And breeding them. Or just - letting them breed. Not sure how much say he has in that part. He’s done a lot with the training, though.”
He didn’t feel he was doing a good job explaining this. “When he gets up, why don’t you ask him to show you whatever he’s been doing with the peacocks?”
“Why, what’s he doing?”
“Haven’t a clue,” said Draco. “But I think we ought to find out.”
“Where are Lucy and Lyra?”
“Starting over with their laundry. Which, by the way, was chock full of your knickers.”
“What? Ew! Why?”
Draco didn’t know that either. “Maybe they’re just old enough to want to be older, and not quite old enough to know that it’s gross to share. Do an inventory of your drawers.”
Hermione slumped onto the closest settee with her head in her hands. “I really botched things today. I ruined that trip. I let him indulge in every single thing he wanted, and look.”
“It might not have been entirely the sweets - although we should also check how bad his teeth might be. He’s had a stash going for some time. But he’s been getting a little sick flying his broom lately. I hadn’t said anything because he was embarrassed about it and I think he’ll probably adjust to the manoeuvres soon enough. I just didn’t think about it today until you’d gone.”
“Or maybe he’s just been making himself sick gorging on candy behind our backs.”
Draco draped his arm over the back of the settee and let her collapse into him instead.
“I just wanted to have a fun day with him where I wasn’t scolding him about something every ten minutes.”
“I know,” said Draco. “And you still can. I bet he’s bloody proud of whatever he’s done with those rabid peacocks. In fact, maybe they’re not hostile anymore. Maybe we could actually walk the grounds. Just rave about how great he did, whatever it is.”
“What if it isn’t great at all? What if they’re all still completely mad?”
“He’s clearly not afraid of them, but if it’s something bad, we’ll figure that out later. But I'll tell him. I’m already planning to have words with him about the sodding rats.”
“Yes, about that…” said Hermione.
But Draco had other ideas. “I have to buy you all new knickers, by the way. I took them all back, of course, but now I can’t look at them the same. But until then… Scorpius is lying down and the girls are extremely busy.”
“Aren’t they just doing laundry? They’ll piddle that away in a matter of minutes and call it done.”
“Not today, they won’t. Even if they do finish, they won’t come out on their own. They’re afraid I’ll give them something else to do.” He dropped his voice to the low growl he knew she liked. “I’ve been extremely demanding.”
* * *
They took quite a while. Draco knew it was indulgent but he didn’t care. It wasn’t until all three children could be heard whispering outside their closed door that he finally called out, in his gruffest voice, “I’m coming!”
“Ew!” squealed Lyra or Lucy or both, and Hermione sat bolt upright with a horrified look.
“How do they know -”
“We weren’t -”
Neither of them were quiet enough about it. Out in the hall, their batch of offspring dissolved into a mix of noise. Draco heard Scorp ask (through his own giggles, just wanting to be a part of things with his big sisters), “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing!”
Hermione yanked the covers over her head, hissing, “Don’t let them in here!”
As if he was remotely tempted. The pack of jackals outside the door could wait. He scouted around for his trousers.
“Are you done with your chores?” called Draco to a chorus of lacklustre ‘yeses.’ “Let’s see, then.”
“Dad, you said you weren’t going to search our room!” said Lyra, sounding panicked. A bit of scuffle could be heard from the hall and he could imagine Lucy trying to shush her sister. He had said that earlier, but only because he didn’t want them to think they needed to hide anything better than it already was.
“I’m not,” said Draco, mouthing, ‘I am,’ to Hermione.
With a grin, she reached for a robe and said, “Scorpius, I’d love to see what you’ve been teaching the peacocks! I’ll meet you on the south lawn in five minutes, alright?”
As she pulled on proper clothing, Draco said, “I think Scorpius needs to intern with Charlie Weasley at his dragon reserve one summer. He’s got a real skill with animal training. He should aim that somewhere that isn’t rats in the pantry. Also, I think I basically promised the girls we’d be getting those Kneazle kittens.”
Hermione beamed at him, gorgeously mirroring the same expression their twins had shared from the bathroom floor that morning.
“Well. Maybe they’ll help with the rats.”
“I expect you to have a chat with Crookshanks about that, by the way. He’s slacking on the job.”
“Or maybe Scorpius has already been in his ear.”
That, Draco thought, was entirely possible.