Lost Memories

lxxvii. initium novum

There wasn't a time I didn't think of my family, my father, taken just as I accepted him and my mother, the woman I never met but always longed to know. And then somewhere in dreams, I dreamt of a pair of muggles longing for a daughter of their own.

A few months after the end of the Second Wizarding War, Hermione and I went back to Hogwarts to finish our schooling. Even Draco went back. Harry and Ron didn't. That spring, the four of us testified for the defected Death Eaters and the Ministry didn't sentence them to Azkaban. Draco Malfoy was safe.

2002: Four years after we graduated, Hermione made up with Draco and became well acquainted— friends even.

2005: After three years of them being civilized, Draco agreed to invite my friends to the Malfoy wedding in the Winter— my wedding. I was no longer Charlotte Snape, but Charlotte Malfoy.

2006: Hermione and Ginny both ended up having children— her, a lovely girl named Rose and Ginny, a beautiful boy named Albus—, nine years after the end of the war. If it holds true, as Ron had told us during the summer after our sixth year, Hermione's May-born witch will marry a muggle.

2010: I had finally had a child, not that Draco and I had been trying— well, two actually, twins: A girl, Victoria Aubrey Malfoy, and a boy, Tobias Draco Malfoy. They were both respectfully named after my parents, along with the tradition of having the father's name as the son's middle name.

2017: And now, nineteen years later, Draco joined me to watch my friends send away their eldest babies to the historical warzone we fought on all those years ago.

"Mum, how come we're not going?" a little voice said next to me.

Looking down, I smiled at my darling girl, "once you turn eleven, you can join your friends at Hogwarts."

A small frown played at her lips and she turned away from me, grabbing onto Draco's arm. She was truly spiteful, a little firecracker— much like me, Draco would say.

"You!" I shouted. People around us turned to see who I was talking to, but I merely walked over to my ground of friends. "Where are your children?"

"Somewhere around here," Harry mumbled, looking around the platform.

"Charlotte," Hermione gasped as she looked over to me, "you're huge."

I narrowed my eyes at her, "shut up. You act as though you didn't look like a whale when you were with Rose."

"Hm, still the hot headed Gryffindor I love," Draco mumbled into my hair. I looked up and he placed a kiss on my lips.

"Ew," Ron groaned causing me and Harry to laugh. He turned to Harry, "parked all right, then? I did. Hermione didn't believe I could pass a Muggle driving test, did you? She thought I'd have to Confund the examiner."

"No, I didn't," said Hermione, "I had complete faith in you."

"I wouldn't have," I laughed.

"As a matter of fact, I did Confund him," Ron whispered to Harry, as together they lifted Albus's trunk and owl onto the train. "I only forgot to look in the wing mirror, and let's face it, I can use a Supersensory Charm for that."

I overheard and began to laugh, causing Hermione to give me weird looks. Victoria and Tobias began to run circles around Draco and me, properly bored at the fact that they wouldn't be boarding the train with their cousins. (Cousins, they called each other, because they had grown up together, for the most part.)

They stopped running and nearly tackled James as he reappeared, divested of his trunk, owl, and trolley, and was evidently bursting with news.

"Teddy's back there," he said breathlessly, pointing back over his shoulder into the billowing clouds of steam, trying to get the twins off of him. "Just seen him! And guess what he's doing? Snogging Victoire!"