A/N: Hey peeps! I've taken the longest break and that's because I was really uninspired.. so I decided to jump back on and start reading. "I'll Walk You Home" by 'justthisguyyouknow' is a great read everybody, it helped me alot with this chapter...

Read it, if you are into Avatar: The Last Airbender the cartoon (the movie SUCKED!) or not. It's really a fic anyone could read and get into! XD!

Anyway, everybody, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed the last time Ms. Mimi Elphie-Amy, cazares.a, paula, HelioApple., Dramione-Fan 17 , KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFun , bluestriker666 , Justthisguyyouknow , CheshireCat23, KangaXX,

Also a thank you, to Katiebear95 and CheshireCat23 for correcting me on Hedwig's gender. Earlier on, I had written Hagrid and I don't know why (my brain works in mysterious ways) and yeah, I had corrected the name, not the pronouns. I'm sorry for that... stupid caffine-operated brain.

ALSO for pointing me out on the switching narratives, my English teacher gets me on that every time. It's great to see some feedback like that (THANK YOU!) I swear I would have left it like that if no one had corrected me.

On with the story that I don't own... *sigh

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Chapter 11

"Are you sure this is where the letter came from?" Ron asked his best friend as they stood in front of the houses 11 and 13 and they casually moved aside to reveal number 12.

"Yeah, I'm sure that Hedwig is sitting on that windowsill. Look at her" Harry said pointing at the snow white owl. "I'm sure she wouldn't have gotten it wrong, I mean it's pretty unlikely, but maybe she came back earlier than she said to get ready for the new year"

"Not likely, mate. This is Hermione we're talking about, she tells us everything, I'm sure Hedwig must have gotten it mixed up" Ron said looking at the house ahead of him.

They stood like that underneath the Invisibility Cloak for a long time, before one of them (the impatient redhead) pointed out "It's no harm checking, right? I mean if she's not here, than we'll just see how things are running, if they're still running"

Ron knew how long since this beautiful townhouse had been last used. He also knew that if it would bring up a few memories of Sirius, it wouldn't be sad, if anything it would be happy and reminiscent. They made their way to the doorstep and as they stepped over the threshold, they were a bit taken aback. Instead of the cobweb mess they expected to find, there was nothing. Of course there was the furniture that was there before, but it looked cleaned and lived in.

Without some of the screaming portraits (Walburga was burnt on the day she called Hermione a mudblood after Sirius's funeral) and without more of the dark schemes, it looked like one of the rest of the houses you looked into around the neighbourhood.

Just as they entered, they heard a thumping sound and it was drawing nearer. Thump, thump, thump, thump, "Harry, Ron, what are you guys doing here?"

Hermione stood there looking like they wandered into the ladies room at a men's bar. She drew towards them with her arms outstretched and she first pulled Harry into a hug. "Wow, you've grown a few, haven't you?" she asks her obviously shorter friend and she moved to the next.

"I've missed you guys sooo much, I've got heaps of things to tell you" she started, obviously working extra, super hard not to be anything different than what she was. She knew the question was coming, so she hoped she could babble on incessantly until she got her story straight.

"Australia was amazing, they've got kangaroos, koalas, crocodiles, but I didn't get to see the magical community, some of the locals do know about them-" she went on with the facts she'd read about in books and she couldn't believe that she was doing this. She was trying to keep them busy as she pieced together the evidence in her head. She walked towards the kitchen with the intention of trying to get them to forget she lied in the letter.

"We were in the deep country so even though we didn't understand anything they said, they were super friendly. Mum and Dad were ecstatic the moment we arrived at the airport" she continued on as they trailed on behind her.

"What's an ehh-pooht?" Ron asked mispronouncing a muggle word as usual. Harry didn't seem so easily distracted.

"Why are you here?" Harry asked out straight. She instantly felt like the intruder she was "Your letter said you wouldn't be coming back till the beginning of the term"

Ron looked like he'd been led off like a little child, he too snapped back to the topic they'd both been thinking about.

"Well, I came back early for personal reasons" she said, sort of stupidly she thought as the words left her mouth. She tried to look like she didn't just think that.

"Personal reasons?" Ron snorted at the idea. "Hermione, you're lying through your teeth, you have no personal reason to be here other than Harry, since this is his house."

"But since he doesn't know about it come on, tell us the truth"

Hermione wanted to slap him for making her feel like a home invader. She didn't crack at him verbally like she usually did, she did something she had never done before.

Walk away from him.

It was harder than it looked because Hermione never walked away from a challenge, but in a way, it could've been seen as growth. Right?

She stomped her way up the stairs and the boys trailed her, Harry tried to apologize while Ron tried to justify his wording. "Hermione, why are you running off? We haven't finished talking to you yet"

Harry tried to make amends for his best friend, "I don't care that you're here Hermione. This is the Headquarters for crying out loud. I just want to know why you're here, that's all"

She thought this seemed to ease her guilt of being in this house uninvited.

So she stopped on one of the landings, jut the one below Cecilia's. "I'm here for personal reasons, can't you guy just leave it at that?" she hoped to Merlin that they would.

"No, we can't. We are your personal life here, we're your friends, we know everything about you. What are you going off about 'personal reasons'?"

"You know Ron, I don't ask for much being friends with the two of you. Not much at all, in fact. So just do this one thing for me and let this go!" she said almost pleading, the key word being almost, it was 10% pleading and about 90% 'Don't fuck with me'.

Ron was used to getting these looks but Harry wasn't in the slightest, he moved to stay where he was but his red haired friend had other ideas and followed her up the stairs. "Hermione, we just want to know why you didn't tell us. You owe us that much at least, I mean, we're your friends you can tell us anything, we know you-"

"Well, Ron for the past six years we've been friends, can you tell me when my birthday is?" she asked stopping to face him, so angry she could strap a belt around his neck and not be hesitant in leaving him literally breathless.

"I can't because you never tell us.." he started but was cut off.

"What are my parent's names?" she asked and this was when Harry stepped onto their level. "Well, that's easy, Mr and Mrs. Granger" Ron said, even when Harry signalled to him to stop.

"Their first names, Ronald" she whispered dangerously. He chose to respond with:

"Well, if we're playing the 'How well do I know my friend game?'. Tell me when was I knocked unconscious the longest"

"The Weasley's were having a game of Quidditch when you were 6 and Charlie hit a bludger your way even though you weren't playing. You were unconscious for 4 days. You can stop with this ridiculous game"

"You started it" he bellowed back because the fight escalated to this level.

"I was proving a point, I am a good friend, you are a horrible one. I don't want to enlighten you about my situation because you just asked. We may have a good friendship but you don't know me and carelessly egging on things I don't want to talk about is not helping you GET TO KNOW ME!"

She totally forgot about the baby on the floor above her, she hoped to Merlin that Cecilia didn't hear them. Harry had spoke up "We are sorry, we didn't mean to pry. We'll leave it alone, what we meant to say was "We are happy you're alright and that Australia didn't keep you long"

Hermione smiled briefly before leading them down the stairs again. Crisis averted, thank Merlin!

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Draco scanned the empty bar and ran a hand through his dirty blonde hair. His transformed face was good enough, he guessed. He had dark eyes and sandy hair that was just as full as his real hair. He scanned the bar and found two targets. One sat with her legs crossed and a book in her hands (in a bar of all places?) by herself and the other was in the middle of a group of girls. These two stuck out because of their striking looks. Nothing drew a man to a woman so easily. He was really just turned 17 and these women were well into their twenties, but he looked much older, probably about the same age as them; he had a chance, that was for sure.

He really just came to the bar to clear his head of that Granger nonsense. He was going bat shit crazy and he wasn't going to do it while she was there watching him fall apart. A drink was all he needed to clear his mind.

Walking up to the bar, he could feel the eyes of the group of women he had his eye on. He slid up and was about to order a firewhiskey, when he realised he was in a muggle bar "Scotch on the rocks, thanks" he nodded to the bartender.

The bartender's bulbus nose sat gingerly on a moustache probably fighting for dominance on his face. Draco briefly wondered how ugly his parents must have been before turning away and looking at the telly.

His drink sat before him on a coaster for a real estate company "Lawsons Realty". He took a swig of his drink before settling his eyes on a crickett game on the telly. He watched not really noticing anything out of the ordinary when something out of the corner of his eye moved.

Draco looked and was shocked to see Ted Tonks, husband of his aunt Andromeda sit beside him. He sat the stillest he had ever did, trying not to look out of the ordinary.

"So, how many wicketts we down?" he said addressing me.

The fair headed boy looked at him to be sure he was speaking to him "I wouldn't be too sure, I'm not a fan"

"By golly this is England, my boy. So what sport does take your fancy then?" he asked, with shock written all over his face. The Malfoy heir knew of a bit of football and said so.

"For some its one or the other but I've got to admit, I'm more of a football fan myself. Good to meet you, the name's Ted Tonks" he said extending his hand. Draco grasped it and lied "ClarkThomas"

"What brings you here at such an hour? You look like you ought to be with your family" The teenager felt his chest tightening up at how true that was. My family ? He never talked to any of them but did living in a house together constitute you as a family. Draco knew that wasn't true, but it didn't help the tightening in his chest.

"I could say the same to you" The boy shot back sipping my drink some more.

"'Dromeda knows that I want to watch the game. Besides, I just found out my daughters pregnant, I had to get out of the house" Draco thought that it was interesting that her cousin had fallen pregnant to a werewolf. He wondered if it would come out half puppy.

"I would say 'Congratulations', but it doesn't seem right to say" The pureblood scanned his uncle, looking for the cause of his distress.

"I'm happy for her, but it just seems like yesterday I was holding her in my hands at the hospital, you know" he said, sipping his beer. "My little bundle of joy I'd call her"

He sighed long fully and set his bottle down slowly.

"What really kills me is that I didn't want a child at first, I never fully embraced fatherhood until she grew onto me" he looked Draco right in the eye "It's not like motherhood.. Ho, ho, ho... It's instantaneous when they put the baby in their arms, it's like it was meant to be"

"But for me it took a long time and now that I'm willing to have my girl with me for another 5 or so years, I've lost her already"

"You haven't lost her" Draco said, wondering why there was something tugging his heart and WHY he was talking to his uncle about problems he'd never think to encounter "You'll never lose her"

Ted smiled and paid for his beer, looking unconvinced. "I bloody hope so"

With that he left leaving Draco with a whole bunch of feelings he couldn't describe.

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Switch to First Person

The air didn't seem to be enough, every single time I breathed in, it wasn't enough. Why wasn't it enough? The cold English air hit me from all directions. "Andromeda!" I called for my sister but no one was there. I distinctively remember the crispness of the air that night, it was cold and I usually thought it uninviting, but not tonight, not anymore for the rest of my life.

"Andromeda!" I called again, trying not to attract any attention but the one of my sister. That's if she was even here. I looked at the untended earth and treasured that sight, the feel of the patches of soil and grass. I tried to catch my breath and appreciate the beauty of everything around me at the same time. I knew that this would be one of the last times I would ever see nature, if things worked out bad or good.

I waited a few more seconds, then I heard a rustling from a bush, I held my wand out at the ready. I was so worked up and carrying Malfoy's heir wasn't helping. A few more breaths later nothing could be heard of again. I placed her hand over her bulging belly and whispered my reassurances.

Before I could scream, a hand was placed over my mouth and my arm was twisted to the back of me that shot up pain from wherever this searing pain came from.

"Do you KNOW what you've almost done?"Lucius' hot breath hit me right in the ear as he hissed it out. "The Dark Lord would've killed us BOTH, had what you've almost done been discovered"

"Or the three of us, as it seems now" he said in a frightened voice. I had never cried so hard and as the tears fell one after the other, I couldn't muffle my sorrows in front of this man.

"Stop crying now, or I'll abort this baby faster than you disappeared" he said and just like that, I had clamped up. "Good girl" he said, apparating me back towards the Manor.

After walking a few minutes I asked "How'd you do it?"

"Do what, the love of my life?" he said not at all hearing the words he had just said because it was cold. He had a hand tight on two wands and the other on my side so I was encased between his arms and body quite rigidly.

"Find me" I whispered as we could now see the manor as the sun rose quite slowly.

He picked up my ring hand and shoved my wedding band on "To death and beyond we are united, Narcissa. Whether or not you are wearing your wedding ring"

That was the last time I had ever cried in my life.

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