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Queuing for a portkey out in the middle of the woods beyond London is not my idea of a good time, but due to certain highly foreseen circumstances, I couldn't travel via apparition. Well, I could, but even I am not so foolhardy and arrogant as to risk my unborn baby's life and limbs by utilising such an extremely dangerous method of transportation, no matter how quick and convenient it is. I am not that selfish, even if I did not marry my child's father for love, but for gain.
Footsteps crunched over the leaf litter and thumped on the bare brown earth between drifts. Not only mine and my husband's, but those of other people as well. A troop of human beings, all making our way to the obscure glade where we would find the portkey transport officers and the obscure pieces of garbage we would be using to teleport to an even more obscure forest in the middle of nowhere on an entirely different continent. it was the Quidditch World Cup. you see, and seemingly all the world's witches and wizards were making the four yearly pilgrimage.
A voice sweeter than any bird's began chirping to my right, where a little boy had just been picked up by his father. "Papa, did you know that the Firebolt is not only the fastest broom in the world, but the fastest broom ever? One hundred and fifty five miles in less than ten seconds. And Uncle Viktor dives straight down?! Do you get how crazy that is?!"
"Yes, Vitya. I did know that, since you and your uncle keep telling me. But no, I don't get how crazy that is. Explain some more, hero," answered the smooth, posh voice of my husband.
The hand holding mine let go in order to playfully pat the fur hat my son was wearing. Eldest son. I had quite a few by now, ten years after I said 'I do', but the rest were at home with their grandparents. Their English grandparents, I should say, as there was no way in hell I would leave them with Yuri's parents. No way in hell. His mother was okay, creepy and sharp as a knife, but okay. Meanwhile, his father was Igor Karkaroff. THAT Igor Karkaroff. The Death Eater with the best PR. I know some serious trauma must have occured thanks to that fact, because Yuri could never admit that his father was evil, even if he occasionally became enraged at him and could admit to disliking some of his actions. Anyway, the man was the last person any sort of living thing, nevermind a child, should be left with. I didn't like to be in his presence at all, but since I'd married his son in order to gain constant access to their beloved school's ship, I couldn't ban him from my life.
"Are you excited to watch the Finals, Vik? Are you going to cheer hard for your uncle?" I asked, tugging on my boy's leg. I could never get the hang of Russian slash Slavic diminutives, I always felt like an imposter when I tried to employ them, so I confined myself to English nicknames and short forms, which meant that my children ended up with even more names than the average Russian child.
"Yes, Mama! Uncle Viktor's going to win! He's going to win the Cup! Again! I know it!" Viktor, his left arm slung around his dad's neck, waved his right hand at me, his face beaming with joy. His namesake and his father, although distantly related, were not brothers, yet they looked alike, and therefore my son looked like Viktor had as a child.
What a bowl of spaghetti I'd thrown myself into. I'm not the biggest fan of pasta, but still, the meal I'd made of my life wasn't a bad one. I had achieved my goal, and had more successes added on besides.
Yuri put our son down, and he immediately raced off on his toy broomstick, spooling out the invisible thread which connected us to him. In a little over a year he'd be off to Hogwarts, and, impossibly, unbelievably, the endless circle would have reached its beginning again.
The horde of magical folk drifting through the forest (some joking and being friendly with other groups, some determined loners keeping their heads down and eyes averted) began to coalesce, forming an arrow of human flesh dressed in robes of various shades of flamboyance, the mass pointing at…the end of a queue.
"Queuing in a forest," my husband said, swinging me around and taking the sunny part of the glade we were forced to wait in, so I could have the shade. "I will never grow accustomed to the English."
"People queue in Russia. I witnessed you almost kick a man to death for jumping one once." I poked him in the ribs, where I knew a rose bloomed across bone.
"Yes. We queue. But not in a forest."
"No, sweetie. Russians ride bears in a forest."
We laughed, although I'd made this same joke and ones very similar to it, many times before. Certain things are perennial, and the differences between cultures is one of them. Such jokes can only be mutually hilarious when both sides are utterly and irrevocably convinced that their people and their ways are superior.
We laughed and pecked at each other and exchanged the sort of looks that tended to swiftly lead to a new addition to our large family, and then Yuri went off to look for Vik and or scout the area and or get away from his sociopathic urges to blow the queue up, leaving me to keep our place (on a conjured rocking chair complete with a foot massage charm attached). Which is when a once-upon-a-time thorn in my side approached, emerging from behind a lean birch.
"Granger. I'd heard rumours, but I didn't countenance them. But it turns out that I should've listened to the gossip." Draco Malfoy, in his iconic black suit, slithered through the dappled light, his hands in his pockets. He was rather more haggard than he should be at twenty-nine, but it turns out that he had an excuse.
"Where you watching us?" I asked, from my throne, which some other waiting women were by then demanding from their significant others.
"Watching you," said Draco, before a flush infiltrated his pale skin. "I don't mean it like that." he lifted his hands from his pockets and held them up in a placatory manner.
So, he'd never gotten over that punch I'd delivered to his rat face? Good. I looked around for a wife and child, after looking round for Crabbe and Goyle, but found none of these things. "I can't imagine what gossip you're on about Draco." No, really. It had been a decade. The gossip should have been confirmed.
The man (…how did time fly? Where did it fly?) shifted his weight nervously, the move taking me back. It hadn't even been that long, but so much had happened since he was tormenting the unfortunate under the enchanted roof of Hogwarts. "You know. That you'd gone off and married a Durmstranger in a whirlwind and subsequently popped out a horde of half-blood children. I can't help but notice that you're pregnant."
Was he attempting to be friendly, and had it come out shitty because that is just how he was, or was he attempting to be mean and had it turn weak because he'd had the stuffing beaten out of him? It was impossible to decide. I decided to act like I assumed he was soft in the head.
"Your eyes are not, currently, deceiving you, Draco. Nor your ears. You can die happy, because I have had the good fortune to marry a pureblood, and he every so often reminds me of that fact."
"Haha. I also married one, but she's quite different…" my former nemesis gazed into the distance, and blinked, an incredibly sad film falling over his features. "I married her for love. But I'm beginning to think I should have done what you did, and marry for anything but. Maybe it would have prevented…" But he didn't finish his thought, shaking his head and applying a light smirk back into his lips.
Luckily, I would be saved from this awkward encounter without having to do anything, because a machine gun bursts of boyish laughter cut through the murmur of the forest and the people waiting to disappear into thin air. A pair of boys were being herded in our direction by my husband, a pair of boys exchanging intricate talk about the relative merits of different brooms, players, and teams. They both idolized Viktor Krum, as it turned out. The one child was, of course, my own black haired cherub, his eyes the icy blue of his grandfather, while the other was the spitting image of none other than Draco. Like his father, there was a permanently sad cast to his sharp features, even under his smiles. So, the rumours that I'd heard in turn, about Draco's wife, were true. The blood curse was going to kill, and kill soon.
My hands, already resting on my globular belly, moved to cover more of it, like they could shield anything. I made some questionable choices, and people looked at me funny sometimes when they weren't looking down on me (still) for being muggle-born, but not for the first time did I find myself grateful beyond all gratitude, not to be Draco Malfoy. Thank God I had not been mauled by love.