Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ivy, watch your trunk,” Pansy called as they strode through King’s Cross.

Her daughter groaned with all of the annoyance a thirteen year old could muster before she stopped her cart and adjusted it. “This is completely illogical,” she said. “We live in Hogsmeade. Why do we have to travel all the way to London just to get on a train to take us all the way back to Hogsmeade?”

Hermione nudged Ivy from where she was walking with Lyra. “Don’t tell me you don’t like staying with us?”

For three years in a row, they’d come down to London a day early to stay with the Granger-Malfoys the night before the train left for Hogwarts.

“I love staying with you, but we could have slept in and gone to Nana Narcissa’s library and then Floo’d home in time to catch the carriages to Hogwarts,” Ivy pouted.

“It’s about the joy of the adventure,” Neville told her, as if that was the right avenue to take with their book loving Ravenclaw.

“You never know when someone cute might come knocking on your door asking if you’ve seen their missing toad,” Pansy said.

Ivy groaned again. “You tell this story every year.”

“I like it,” Heather said.

Neville beamed down at her as he helped her manage her cart.

“What story?” Scorpius asked.

“The story of how your Uncle Neville and Aunt Pansy met,” Hermione said.

“It’s the story of how everyone met your Uncle Neville and your mummy,” Draco drawled.

Hermione looked down at Scorpius. “Your Uncle Neville was the very first friend I made at Hogwarts,” she said. “We sat in the same train compartment and have been friends ever since.”

He frowned. “Can’t I just sit by Lyra?”

“I’m going to be with Arthur and the rest of the Second Years,” Lyra said. “You might be a Gryffindor and we only sit with other Slytherins.”

He stuck his nose in the air, looking exactly like his father had at that age. “Mummy is a Gryffindor.”

“You can sit by me!” Heather said. “We can be friends with everybody.”

Draco and Hermione exchanged a smirk. Pansy caught their gazes with a glare that made both of them school their expression.

“Ooh, I see Puja!” Picking up her pace, Ivy raced ahead to greet her friend.

“Rahul!” Heather said before she and Scorpius followed after her older sister.

Ron and Padma were always the first ones to arrive. Pansy wondered how Padma was holding up. She’d hardly been able to talk about Rahul going to Hogwarts for the first time all summer without tearing up.

Lyra looked around. “When is Arthur getting here?” The two had been nearly inseparable since they were born. Artie was technically eighteen days older than her, but those two and a half weeks were probably the only time in his life he’d had an independent thought, after that he simply followed Lyra’s lead.

“The Potters will be here about one minute before the train takes off,” Draco muttered.

Hermione shot him a sharp look, but Pansy was firmly on Draco’s side. The Potter clan was not known for their timeliness. There was more than one reason they always stayed with the Granger-Malfoys when they were in London.

“I’m going to make sure we get a good compartment then,” Lyra announced, striding forward towards the barrier.

Pansy took the brief pause to rub her lower back. Neville’s hands were there a moment later, finding the exact right spot to apply pressure and she sighed.

“You know there’s a potion for that,” Draco drawled.

“And a charm,” Hermione offered helpfully.

“Fuck off,” Pansy said now that none of their children were close. She was getting sick of everyone commenting on the fact that she was pregnant. Again. At forty. “You know that this is Augusta’s doing.”

Hermione smirked. “Maybe Ginny should have given you both the sex talk years ago if you think that’s how pregnancy happens.”

She glared at her. “Augusta obviously performed some sort of fertility ritual to ensure that I gave birth to a male heir.”

She and Neville were always so careful.

Most of the time.

It was possible that once or twice a small error had been made, but it was less embarrassing to blame Augusta so that’s what she would do. Damn harridan had been far too smug when Pansy and Neville had announced the news.

Neville sighed. “I’ve been through all of the Longbottom Family spells and can say for a fact that no such ritual exists—”

“Because concerned parties never share family spells with their friends?”

“Not without living to regret it,” Draco mumbled.

Pansy and Neville exchanged a smirk before they followed their children towards the barrier. Platform 9¾’s was as busy as ever, students running around and calling out to friends they hadn’t seen all summer.

Pansy couldn’t help but smile as more than one student waved at or greeted Neville. She walked over to kiss Padma on both cheeks after Neville got stopped by a group of Gryffindors.

“How are you holding up?” Pansy asked her.

“Don’t ask her that,” Ron moaned.

Tears welled in Padma’s eyes. “He’s my baby and he’s leaving me.”

“Just have another one.”

Pansy turned and saw Ginny walking towards them with a bright smirk. James had already disappeared, but Artie went straight for Lyra while Lily ran to go greet Scorp, Heather, and Rahul. Violet held firmly to her father’s hand, watching the bustle with wide eyes. She had two years left before she’d be off on the Hogwarts Express for the first time.

Ginny held up her hand as a barrier and leaned towards Padma. “Actually, don’t do that, a baby at forty is wildly irresponsible,” she muttered loudly. She turned to Pansy with a giant grin. “Hi, Pansy, always so good to see you!”

“Ivy!” Pansy called. “Come say hi to your grandmother.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “I have one grandma and we visited her yesterday.”

In addition to Sunday teas, they always went to see Frank and Alice on special occasions. Alice absolutely adored her granddaughters. Her very first smile since her attack had been the moment Pansy put Ivy in her arms a few hours after she was born.

“It’s not funny, mum!” Ivy snapped before she linked arms with Puja and pulled her away from the crush to whisper together.

“Godric, she’s getting sassy,” Ginny said with a fond voice.

Pansy smirked. “I’ve never been so proud.” She turned to Ginny and glanced around the platform. “Where are your parents?”

Ginny cringed. “Dad’s parking the car, don’t ask.”

“Alright, if you’re a Weasley, Potter, Longbottom, or Malfoy, bring your trunks over here!” Neville’s voice carried across the busy platform.

Luckily, he was one of the few adults they all listened to and each of them, even James, scampered to obey him.

Pansy smiled to herself as she watched him heft Lily, Scorpius, Rahul, and Heather onto the train and then their trunks after them. Violet let go of Harry’s hand and ran over to her older siblings and cousins. She jumped up and down, begging to get on the train too so Neville finally lifted her aboard with a grin. Roxie, Fred, and Lalit appeared from somewhere and Pansy craned her neck to look for George and Angelina and Parvati and Lee.

“We can go now, right?” Angelina asked, walking up to the group. “Nev’s got this?”

“Don’t you want to say goodbye?” Padma’s voice cracked on the last word and tears welled in her eyes.

“Oh, Padma!” Parvati laughed and wrapped her arms around her twin.

“The past two years have been hard enough when it was just Puja but now that Rahul is going too…” Padma sniffed and wiped the tears off her cheeks. “How did you do it last year?”

“Pointed Lalit at the train, told him to keep an eye on Fred, ask Puja if he needs help, and not to trust James or do anything his father would have done,” Parvati said.

George and Lee exchanged a look. “That’s good advice,” George said.

“Yeah,” Lee said. “Although, he should do some of the things I did.”

Parvati rolled her eyes at him.

“Like attending most of my classes?”

“He should go to them all!”

“Did we miss them?” Theo demanded, hurrying towards the group.

“Nah, they’re just getting settled in their compartments,” Neville said as he finally made his way over.

“I told you we have plenty of time left,” Blaise said.

“Yeah, well, you also said we’d beat the Potters here,” Theo muttered.

“We got here twenty-two minutes early,” Harry said.

“Lyra told Art to set the clocks twenty minutes ahead last night when we were sleeping,” Ginny said.

Draco and Hermione both started laughing.

“He even got my watch,” Harry said. “I still don’t know how. I was wearing it!”

“Slytherin,” Draco said with no small measure of pride.

“The only reason Art is a Slytherin is because ‘M’ comes before ‘P’ in the alphabet and Lyra was sorted first,” Ginny said.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Draco said. “You birthed a Slytherin.”

Ginny glared at him.

“Could be worse,” George said, smirking directly at Pansy. “You could have given birth to a Hufflepuff.”

“She has two children left to be sorted,” Pansy said. “She might have.”

Ginny smirked. “Are you saying that the child that scaled Nev’s greenhouse when she was six years old to scare him through the ceiling is going to be anything other than a Gryffindor, or are you suggesting that Violet is going to be a Hufflepuff?”

Over her dead body was any child named after her going to end up anywhere but Slytherin. Ginny and Harry remained delightfully naive to her plans to ensure Violet ended up taking after Artie and not James or Lily.

Molly and Arthur walked over to the group.

“Get parked okay?” Hermione asked with trepidation.

“Perfectly,” Arthur said cheerily.

“Only one confundus needed,” Molly said.

“Mum!” Ginny said.

Molly ignored her and handed the satchel she was carrying to Pansy. “Here’s refills on everything.”

“Oh, Morgana bless you.” There was nothing better than Molly’s home remedies. She leaned closer. “Draco keeps trying to force his apothecary grade potions on me and they’re absolute rubbish.”

She had no idea how Hermione had made it through two pregnancies without Molly’s assistance. Worthless snobbish potions masters. She’d never asked what was in the potions Molly made, she just knew that when she was pregnant with Ivy and unable to make it out of bed or keep any of her morning appointments, Molly had appeared in her kitchen, brewed her a special tea, and she was up on her feet in minutes. Since then, she’d blindly taken anything the witch had given her.

Molly tutted. She started to turn towards Draco, but her gaze stopped on Padma. “Oh, dear.”

“She’s been like this all morning.”

Molly squeezed Pansy’s hand and then walked over to pull Padma into a tight hug.

Pansy heard someone yell out about Uncle Theo and, in less than a minute, they were mobbed with children as they raced from their compartments for a round of hugs and sweets slipped into their pockets from various adults.

Pansy and Neville finally got a moment alone with both their daughters. Pansy pulled Ivy into a tight hug, still amazed that she was almost as tall as she was. “I love you, sweet,” she said. “Promise you’ll come for tea each Hogsmeade weekend? Bring any of your friends.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Some of them think it’s weird to visit their professor’s house.”

“My friends loved it.”

They looked up and Ivy squealed. “Auntie Penelope!”

Penelope laughed as Ivy hugged her tightly. Pansy noticed Penelope slip a small coin purse into her robe pockets. “Gives you a good excuse to look for the answer keys to all his exams.”

Ivy pulled back, horrified. “But then we won’t learn it for ourselves.”

Penelope smirked. “Ravenclaw through and through.” She kissed her forehead. “Visit your mother, okay?” Ivy finally nodded, albeit a bit begrudgingly. Penelope hugged Heather next, also passing her a coin purse.

Pansy hugged Jacob. “What are you two doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were flying back from Australia with Theresa and Richard.”

Penelope had combined her love and talent for herbology with her father’s business acumen and was slowly building a herbology and potion ingredient supply empire.

Jacob shuddered. “On the muggle flying steel death trap? Absolutely not.”

“It’s a luxury private jet,” Hermione drawled.

“It’s horrifying is what it is,” Jacob muttered. “Things shouldn’t be able to fly without magic.”

Penelope smirked at her husband. “The trip down there didn’t go so smoothly, so I convinced the portkey office to give us an emergency portkey back to Britain.”

“Who did you bribe in Australia?” Blaise asked.

“No one.” Penelope started to sniffle. “It’s just, my muggle parents changed their plans to extend their trip, and Harry Potter’s children were looking forward to having me see them off on the Hogwarts Express, sorry, yes I am good friends with Harry Potter, why of course, I do happen to have Hermione Granger’s autobiography of the war autographed by all three members of the Golden Trio, would you like a copy?”

“Sounds like a bribe,” Draco drawled.

“By the way, I have a dozen more copies in the car that I need the three of you to sign before you head home,” Penelope told Hermione.

“I thought you were sharing them with friends,” Hermione said. “Not using them as bribes.”

“Anyone could be a friend I just haven’t met yet,” Penelope said. When Hermione narrowed her eyes, Penelope sighed. “You know how difficult it can be to be a muggleborn in this world…”

“Fine, we’ll do it,” Hermione snapped.

Penelope smirked proudly before going off to hug the rest of the kids and slip them galleons.

Pansy crouched down to look at Heather. She started sniffling. Pansy pulled her into a tight hug. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” she said. “You’re going to make so many friends and have so many adventures. You know all of your cousins and have your big sister there and you’ll see your dad every single day.”

“I’m going to miss you and I don’t get Hogsmeade weekends for two years,” she said.

Pansy cupped her cheeks. “I’ll come to every quidditch game and your dad will sneak me into the castle anytime you want, okay?”

She nodded, but didn’t look up from her feet.

“What is it, sweet?”

“I don’t know what House to pick,” she said in a rush. “I want to be a Slytherin like you and a Gryffindor like dad and a Ravenclaw like Ivy.”

Pansy cupped her cheeks. “The only thing you should be is yourself.”

“But everyone I know is in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin,” she said. “What if I get Hufflepuff?”

“Then it’s just more friends to make.”

She shuffled her feet.

“Your Uncle Ron is the only Gryffindor in his family of Ravenclaws, your Auntie Hermione is the only Gryffindor in her family of Slytherins, and Artie is the only Slytherin in a family of Gryffindors.” Depending on how Rahul, Scorp, and Lily were sorted, but—unless there were surprises—their placements almost seemed like a given. “But none of that matters, right?”

Heather shook her head.

“And why not?”

She smiled. “Because we’re all family and family is stronger together.”

Pansy kissed her forehead as the train’s warning whistle sounded. “Remember, your daddy and I are so proud of you and love you more than you will ever know,” she said. “And if you do get Hufflepuff, I will proudly show up to Hogwarts dressed in black and yellow like a giant bumblebee.”

Well, mostly black with a pop of yellow but it would get the point across.

Heather giggled and flung her arms around her. Pansy squeezed her tight, feeling tears prick her eyes before Heather let go. Pansy watched as she ran towards the train and hopped on.

Neville walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, resting his hands on her swollen belly. A minute later, Heather appeared at the window, waving frantically with Scorp, Rahul, and Lily practically falling out.

“Lily, feet on the seat!” Ginny yelled.

Ivy and Puja waved from their compartment, down the line she saw the rest of the familiar faces beaming and waving at them.

Violet ran after the train, waving at her siblings and cousins as it took off. She was the last of them to still be at home. Well, until little Rowan was born.

Pansy sniffed and inhaled deeply, trying to control her breathing.

“Oh, no,” Ginny said. “Not you too.”

“Pregnancy hormones are a bitch, okay?”

“Especially when you’re forty,” Ginny said.

“This is what I get for bribing the herbology professor into giving my children good grades,” she said with a sigh.

Neville squeezed her hip in warning and all she could do was giggle as the train slowly disappeared, all of them waving until there was nothing but empty tracks. The other adults around them started apparating away or slipping back through the platform.

“You know what I’m excited for?” George asked. “The time James teases Heather one time too many for being a Hufflepuff and she makes him eat his words.”

Pansy smirked. The sorting could still go any way. Heather had also inherited her father’s bravery and Pansy’s deviousness. But George was right. A Hufflepuff with both those qualities was going to be a fearsome sight.

Ginny started laughing. “Good Godric,” she said. “Can you imagine what we all would have said twenty-five years ago if we’d found out that Pansy Parkinson would marry Neville Longbottom and raise a Hufflepuff?”

Pansy sighed. “It’s our fault she turned out that way,” she said. “We loved her too much and didn’t give her enough childhood trauma.” She brushed away an imaginary tear as she looked up at Neville. “We really have no one to blame but ourselves.”

“Going to raise this one in a cupboard under the stairs?” Harry asked.

“As happy as that would make Augusta, I was thinking about letting his Uncle Theo and Uncle Blaise raise him.”

Hermione snorted. “To be spoiled rotten the whole time?”

“Exactly, he’ll end up just like your husband,” Pansy said.

“That sounds insufferable,” Neville said.

“Yes, but at least he’ll be a Slytherin.”

Padma finally walked over from where she’d been at the end of the platform, Molly rubbing her back while Ron chatted with his father and Violet skipped next to them. Padma immediately turned to Neville. “Will you write me every single day and tell me—”

“Puja and Rahul will write to you themselves,” he said. “But I promise, I will Floo you immediately if you need to know anything important.”

Parvati grabbed her arm. “Come on,” she said. “Theo’s paying for brunch. You’ll feel better after a few mimosas.”

“That’s my inheritance you’re wasting,” Pansy said.

“Between your business and Professor Perfume Empire over there, you’re doing just fine for yourselves,” Theo said. “You’re just grumpy because you can’t have a mimosa. Or caffeine.”

“Violet and I will get our own special drinks, won’t we?” Pansy asked her.

She nodded and skipped to hold her hand. “Aunt Pansy? Will you still bring me to the Platform even after Heather graduates?”

She squeezed her goddaughter’s hand. “I promise.” As if anything could keep her away.

Violet beamed at her and then ran to catch up to Harry.

Pansy paused for a moment at the end of the line to slip back through the platform to King’s Cross and turned back to look at the empty tracks.

“They’re going to be great,” Neville said. “I’ll keep an eye on them.”

She felt tears well up in her eyes. It still caught her off guard some days, that she didn’t have to worry. That she knew he would always be there. For her, for their girls. For every single person he loved.

She would forever be grateful that she was one of them.

Neville leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, his hand on the small of her back with a soft, gentle reassuring pressure. He gave her a warm smile. “I promise.”