Chapter Text
6 years later
Lucius leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his tea as he watched his grandson wobble over the grass further into the garden, Draco right behind him, trying to make sure he didn’t fall. Scorpius had only just learned to walk and now protested loudly every time someone wanted to pick him up. Considering the stubbornness of both of his parents, that hardly came as a surprise. He was reasonably sure that the boy’s first word would be a firm “no”, no matter how much Hermione and Draco tried to convince him to say mom or respectively dad. So far, he refused to parrot either and communicated instead with happy or unhappy screeches or baby talk.
“Give him a few more weeks and all we’ll do is running after him,” Narcissa, who sat next to him on the outside coffee table, commented as Draco caught Scorpius around the waist and turned him into the other direction so he wouldn’t run into the small group of peacocks and peahens who watched the whole thing with interest. “We’ll need to place a safety charm on the stairs so he doesn’t fall.”
“I’ll do it later when we go in.” Better sooner than later. At the moment, someone was always on Scorpius’ heels, but he was quite fast already and it was only a question of time that he would manage to get away from someone and the only real danger he could get himself into were the many stairs of the Manor, especially the grand staircase.
He turned when he heard footsteps from the entrance and saw Hermione, still in her working robes, approach them. She smiled in greeting, but before she could say anything, a loud screech came from the opposite direction and Scorpius came running as fast as his little legs would carry him. Two steps away from his mother, though, he stumbled and fell into the grass, Draco missing him by a few inches. Hermione picked him up before he could decide whether the fall was worth crying about and kissed his cheek. “Hello, darling, did you have a good day?”
Fall forgotten, he started babbling happily.
Hermione grinned and gave Draco a quick kiss before sitting down in one of the empty chairs.
“And how was your day, Minister?” She had been elected Minister for Magic two months ago and Lucius would never get tired of hearing her addressed as Minister Malfoy. This position brought with it a lot of work, of course, but it was admirable how she handled the balance between work and being a good mother to her son. The fact that Draco could work from home when working on his potions or the book he was currently writing, made it easier, and if everything else failed, there were always the grandparents. It worked well and Lucius was secretly hoping for a second grandchild and he knew Narcissa was, too.
“Very good,” Hermione smiled broadly at him and Lucius raised an eyebrow. Something was up. “I got the report on the current status of our environmental project.” She held the still babbling Scorpius in her lap with one arm and reached into her pocket with her free hand, pulling out a folded piece of parchment and handed it to Lucius.
He unfolded it and read through the statistics. Five years ago, they had managed to officially open their own department, with Hermione as the department head. Each year, more employees and funds had been approved. When she had decided to run for Minister, she had chosen a colleague who would take her position in case she won, which she had, and the young man who had been part of the team since the beginning did a great job so far. They were both still very much involved, but as Minister her focus needed to be on the Ministry as a whole, not just the one department she had built the foundation for almost eight years ago.
The statistics showed an overview of the achievements and they were quite impressive. Thanks to Draco’s potions the oceans were mostly clean, the deforestation, especially of the rainforests, was stopped (miraculously the machines didn’t work anymore, no matter what Muggles tried, they hadn’t even bothered to somehow explain that away), the climate was stabilising, piles of rubbish had vanished, atomic bombs in all countries had been replaced by dummies which wouldn’t do any harm should anyone be crazy enough to use them, endangered species, both magical and non-magical, were protected and most Muggles didn’t suspect a thing. There were a few conspiracy theorists who thought aliens were responsible or something along those lines, but no one seemed to take them seriously. They had worked hard on not only solving the individual environmental problems, but also to keep Muggles in the dark, and after their first successes, ministries all over the world had joined their efforts. There was still a lot to do, but they were definitely on the right way.
“That’s quite impressive.” He handed the parchment to Narcissa. “Especially considering it has only been a few years.”
“Definitely.” Her grin broadened. “I also heard that Harry and Ginny finally threw Ronald out.” Ron, who was still only working occasionally and had never again found a Quidditch-related job, had still been living with the Potters.
Draco laughed. “It took him pretty long to come to his senses.”
“You can say that again. At least I was faster than him.”
“I hate to break it to you, but five years is not fast by any means,” Lucius drawled and watched resigned as Zeus jumped into his lap and immediately rolled up, purring loudly. Six years and the bloody cats still wouldn’t leave him alone. Well, maybe it wasn’t all bad, he mused, as he started stroking through soft fur.
~The End~