Chapter Text
Friday March 18th 2016
My other half,
Oi! Can you believe that our River is turning TWENTY in just three days?! How has time flown by so fast??? It seems like just yesterday when you brought me to the hospital to meet the son you rescued, his tiny hand in ours as we brought him home...
And now 20?!
But to be fair, even though it feels like no time at all, I can vividly remember all the harrowing details - such as how many girls (and boys) he's snogged. How he's been downright broody for years and seems to be rebelling, but I have no idea against what. It's a bit like the time I walked in to find him fresh from losing his virginity. He was 17, so that was at least a bit of a relief in that he'd waited until he legally could consent, but he had been SO adamant for YEARS that he was going to wait for the right person, and then he just apparently said fuck that and got drunk and pulled a random stranger.
THANK MERLIN AND SALAZAR that they remembered to use protection!!!
But still, I stood there reeling in shock for probably a good ten minutes before I was able to gather my wits and shut the door to his hotel room so that I could go tell you what had happened and we could come up with a plan to deal with the situation. Meanwhile, he and his one off were passed out and had no idea that I was considering hexing them both!
Side note: I'm still rather surprised that with how very much River likes girls (and does his best to kiss every single one in the world, oi), he pulled a bloke. I wonder if he was simply going for a sure thing, or if he was actively trying to rebel in every way possible. Sigh...
WHY am I dwelling on this yet again??? I am *trying* to talk about how proud of River I am. How much I admire that he chose to learn his career from an early age and has been running his own successful business since he turned 17. And the fact that he personally goes to that safe haven park I created and volunteers his time to help kids with their homework or whatever else they might need.
He really is a diamond covered in gold and wrapped in a layer of angsty rebellion. And now he's going to be 20! I feel like I must be a hundred years old, sigh...
And despite the fact that he's been a challenge, at least we've got to 'keep' him. I still have no idea how we managed to make it through sending Viona, Eris, Orion, Hazel, Siri, AND Zwei to Hogwarts. Yeah sure, that still leaves Zaire, Jaz, Persephone, Lily, and Caelum at home with us, but it really feels like a huge part of my heart is missing having so many of them leave each September 1st.
Oh! I suppose I'm overjoyed we get to keep Shtara too. I'll never forget the day we first met her. We were in New York as you were having yet another book signing. She came into the book store looking and smelling like she's never bathed in her life, but her grin was SO brilliant as she rather engagingly told us all about how much she loves going to the library and reading your books. How she loves to imagine herself as part of our crazy life.
I'm dead certain you fell in love with her at first sight, but it took me probably five whole minutes to fall in love with her too. At first, we were just like: "Aww, she's precious, despite clearing having inattentive parents." But then her conversation turned to how she has had to temporarily steal a couple of your books from the library so that she could read them to her sick mum.
After a few strategic questions designed to NOT scare her off, we determined that she had no home (and thus no address to obtain a library card with), and that her mother has some form of cancer that is slowly killing her. Concerned, we naturally asked Shtara to stay in the bookstore and eat a sandwich and some biscuits while chatting with our Divas - as this was the last stop before they were going to be heading off to Hogwarts. Unsurprisingly, our Divas got along swimmingly with Shtara, despite the fact that they were 11 and she was only 9 at the time.
It was clear to all of us that our Shtara had a dynamic personality and that she would fit in like she was born to our family. I strongly feel like she was born to our family, she simply needed to take a bit of a detour before arriving.
As our Divas chatted with her and stuffed her full of food, they subtly cast cleaning charms on her to improve her smell and also repaired her tattered clothes. After a while, they asked if they could 'play with' her wildly curly black hair. I love her hair, and I know you hate when I go on and on about other people's hair, but her hair is just such a lovely riot that I think a person would have to be made out of stone to not like it.
By the time we were able to follow Shtara back to her hovel and meet her mother, Shtara looked like a shining angel. Everyone we passed on the streets clearly loved her, most saying hi, and quite a few expressing concern that she was being followed by two white men and a mob of children. I'm sure that the fact that some of the children didn't look like us made people wonder if we had nefarious intentions. Our support staff didn't seem to ease any concerns, strangely enough.
But of course we didn't have nefarious intentions.
We talked with Shtara's mother for a long time, learning that her illness made it hard for her to keep a job, and despite trying to utilize government programs, eventually, they'd been evicted and had nowhere to go. They'd tried to stay at women and children centers for a while, but those places are so crowded that it was too much for her to 'fight their way in' each day, and so they'd found a small patch of space under a bridge and made a bit of a nest.
You were definitely crying while listening to her, and I was damn close to crying as well. We told her who we were, proving it by showing her your picture on the back of your books, plus our IDs and a photo album of photos of us in Unity Houses around the world. We then asked if we could help them.
Shtara's mother looked so relieved to finally have a safe place and good people interested in helping them, that she... nearly died on the spot. We had to rush her to a hospital. But it was already far too late. The doctors said she was holding on by a very thin thread. She - more than likely through the power of sheer will - held on just long enough for us to have legal paperwork drawn up.
The moment the adoption papers were signed, poor Liz died. We gave her a lovely funeral, that was attended by a surprisingly large amount of people, and even though it *could* be claimed that it was all homeless people come to claim a free meal, it honestly was that they loved her and Shtara so much.
The only truly strange part of the whole thing was that a few people grumbled that if we were so rich that we could just adopt any old girl off the street, then why didn't we adopt or look after them ALL? I had to remind you that you've done more than your fair share of taking care of the less fortunate kids in the world.
That said, I immediately began work on plans to create a safe place for those kids - similar to the park I created in London.
Shortly after that, we brought our newest daughter home and put her in therapy.
Which was for the best, really, as she's now 13 and one of the happiest and most brilliant girls on the planet. She's muggle, so she stays home with us while the others are at Hogwarts, but that doesn't deter her in the slightest as she would much rather sing and dance at Elena's school.
Ugh! I'm clearly feeling nostalgic and overemotional because I've just blubbered on about our kids for over two hours. I think I need to sign off now and come find you so that we can snuggle up. Better yet, I should probably spank you.
River deep, mountain high,
Draco
Saturday March 19th
My Man,
You're surprised that an email that was going to be about how excited you are about our son turning twenty ended up being two hours of you blubbering on about our children? Have you met yourself? If anything, I'm surprised that you only went on for two hours. Did you have a pressing case you were working on or something? How did you manage to limit yourself? Inquiring minds want to know!
Alright, I will stop giving you a hard time. Merlin knows if I allow myself to wax poetic about any of our family members, I will either babble on endlessly for hours, or I will write nothing because my eyes will be too full of tears to be able to type. I actually had to stop partway through reading your own message to dry my eyes and calm myself. Thinking about where our sweet River was when we first found him, remembering the joys and drama of his teen years, and then his current victories? Oh my sweet little buddy can't be turning twenty! I won't allow it. Nope.
He has become such a wonderful man. His business is flourishing, he loves what he does and it shows. 'His' children at the Safe Haven are doing wonderfully. He has a wonderful relationship with his brothers and sisters. I want him to be less angsty for himself, because I think he'd be happier, but for myself there is nothing about him I am anything less than one hundred percent proud of. Being his Dad is one of the highlights of my life. Knowing I could have easily been nothing more than that guy who's married to his father makes every time he calls me "Dad" that much more meaningful.
When you talked about meeting him that first time at St. Mungo's and then went on to say you remember "all the harrowing details" I assumed you meant the details of his rescue and recovery. But no, you mean the harrowing details of his teenaged years. You, my love, are still most definitely the baby guy. Now that we have no babies, you're definitely the "little kid guy" and the "adult children guy" but you will never be the "teenager guy."
Honestly, your son who we spent his entire teen years chasing around to keep his mouth off every non-related teenager he could find, lost his virginity at seventeen years old. Which is older than you were I might add. And you still couldn't handle the knowledge. Stick to your lane sweetheart, leave the angsty teenagers to me.
I miss our angsty teenagers! I'm so glad our whole crew's coming home for River's birthday this weekend! We've got Elena, River, and Miles living on their own and six of our children off at Hogwarts, leaving most of our day to day life with only six kids at home. With Shtara, Zaire, and Jaz off at their day schools during the day, we end up with pretty much just the three littles at home. Our crazy crew of thirteen children has dwindled down to a trio of five-year-olds.
I suppose it's probably a good thing that these little almost triplets of ours are the feistiest of the family. I always knew our Persephone was going to be high maintenance. She's still the tiniest little thing, most people we meet assume she's about three years old, but her personality packs a punch. She was the first of the trio to walk, first to talk, and first to learn to wrap her Daddies around her fingers. She might be tiny but she will not get lost in the crowd.
Lily, on the other hand, was trickier. She spent her entire first year of life content to be held and fed, cooing and smiling at everyone, barely a fuss to be made. I thought we had another silently strong child like our Orion. No. Our Lissa was just learning all of our weaknesses to exploit them later. I'm making it sound like she's a monster. She's absolutely not. Her heart is enormous, but after the second time she emptied the Divas' closets in an attempt to donate all their clothes "to the poor children with no clothes, Daddies," I realized we probably needed to rein her in a bit.
Just as I knew Seph was going to be a handful, you were the first to realize that Caelum was going to keep us on our toes. He still keeps the oddest hours. When I go to check on him in the mornings, I never know which of his siblings beds he's going to be in. I'm glad we have the property warded to the teeth, because I've found him sleeping in the gardens three times in the last year.
The Troublesome Trio makes The Mischief Twins look like angels in comparison. It's probably a good thing we had these three last or we may not have had any more after them. Or perhaps they somehow knew they needed to be the spoiled babies of a large family and some higher power planned their births accordingly!
Although we did gain our Shtara after they were born, so they couldn't be all THAT much trouble! Or she's just that wonderful. You're absolutely right, it was love at first sight. It's funny because she's our only non-magical child, but when I try to think of words to describe her the first one that comes to mind is magic. Perhaps it's better for everyone that she doesn't have magic the way the rest of us do. All that charm and charisma, all that talent, the sheer joy that shines from her face … add magic to that and it would just be unfair to the rest of the world. She needs a little something to keep her a little humble!
To heck with it, screw humble, she's amazing! Humble is an overrated virtue in my opinion. As long as you're not being a braggart or a sore winner, take your worth and own it!
See? Set me free with a computer and thoughts about my wonderful family, and I can prattle on at length too!
You set my soul aflame,
Harry
Sunday March 20th 2016
My dearest,
I love how you always call it working on cases whenever I go into the office, even when all I am doing is going over ALL the paperwork filed regarding the raid I led on Wednesday to make certain there are no discrepancies. I get paid for the work, not the time it takes to do it, so I had no qualms about taking a two hour lunch break and then wasting it reminiscing about our children.
Today, however, is the big family dinner. All the kids came back from Hogwarts Friday night for the weekend - Including Viper's kids - and spent all of yesterday running around the Manor dueling each other. If this is how they act at school, I'm honestly surprised that we don't get more letters from McGonagall!
"Dear Misters Malfoy, your hooligans are at it again, kindly come to school and embarrass them atrociously, sincerely, Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress."
Anyway, Miles, Colm, Sammy, and Charlotte arrived last night for a sleepover, and all day today, members of our circle have been arriving. Including Mike and Jackie all the way from Australia. I look forward to having a nice long chat with them, mostly checking up on Unity Australia, which they've been working at for the past couple of years since retirement apparently didn't suit them.
I feel like I'm forgetting people, but you're literally here somewhere, and so, you'd know who I was forgetting - OH! There goes Sebastian, brooding over to the table to glare at everyone as he's almost certainly wondering why he's required to attend this large family function. Don't get me wrong, Sebastian and River have always gotten along, but Sebastian still feels like he should never have to leave his lab longer than it takes to go to the loo, haha.
The only person I can think of that HASN'T arrived yet is Mahafsoun. I'm excited to finally see her. When she originally moved to America, your ward but in the care of Portia, I thought that the most likely scenario was that she'd work on that vampire show of hers for a couple of months, and then it would end and she'd be back in no time. But then her show did brilliantly and she was asked to stay in America permanently.
She and Portia had been living together for about six months at that point, and Portia decided that it just made the most sense to adopt Mahafsoun. Thus, she's been living continuously in California for the last several years and we haven't seen her at all because we've just been too busy with tours, our regular traveling, staying on our Island whenever we've needed a break, and my occasional Auror work.
River has complained at length that we've never made time to go visit her, but since they talk via Magi-Skype every single night, he must still feel as if they are good friends. Maybe now that her show has ended - they felt that the vampire trying to fit in at human high school storyline had reached its natural conclusion - she might be ready to move back permanently. That said, Portia hinted to me via Insta-owl that the Producers have been trying hard to get approval for a spinoff in which Mahafsoun will play her vampire character as she lived throughout the countless centuries of her life.
Knowing Mahafsoun, all she'll have to do is bat her pretty eyes at any person necessary, and they'll fall all over themselves to approve the new show for her.
OOO! She's here!
-
Well... that was... unexpected...
Mahafsoun told us that her mother had magic but that she didn't, and so far, that has been true. She's apparently tried a lot to use Portia's wand because she feels like it's part of her, but nothing ever worked, no matter how hard she tried. She was a bona fide squib - not that there's anything wrong with that.
But then she arrived in the Manor today and since I was the first to notice her arrival, I was the first to greet her. She is looking as lovely as ever. Actually, better than ever because she's a grown woman now and her inherent sensuality looks right, whereas before, it was weird to see on a child. Sort of mesmerizing, but still weird.
Here's the thing, and I suppose that it might explain why I fell for her at first sight...
So, after I'd greeted her hello with a nice squeezy hug and a kiss to the cheek, Eris spotted her and called out her name joyously (she always had gotten along rather well with our Divas), and THAT caught the attention of Orion and both Rivers. Orion looked very interested, but glanced nervously at his brother, because it's pretty well known that River has acted a bit territorial toward her in the past. OTHER River is very out and proud about being gay, so he was interested in her arrival solely because he's probably heard a LOT about her from our River.
In any case, I hadn't even had a chance to let Mahafsoun go yet when River ran over and tore her from my arms. "MAHAFSOUN!!!" He shouted in a tone that really sounded like he'd just found his long lost best friend or... lover... Considering that he (as expected) gave her an entirely WAY too passionate kiss of greeting, which she responded to rather possessively and with an animalistic growl, I'm going to assume that he considers her most definitely his lover.
The fact that she promptly sprouted wings and flew off with him means that there was a reason I always thought of her as very like Blaise. I *was* reacting to an unawakened Veela, I just didn't think it was truly possible considering the fact that she had no magic. I've never met a Veela that wasn't magical. More importantly, unlike with Blaise, I wasn't immune to her because I wasn't a possible soulmate candidate. So all those times when I confused everyone - even myself - by being creepily possessive of her, it really was my desire to be like a father to her coming in direct conflict with her *inherent* powers influencing me.
Speaking of Veelas and Blaise, he burst out in a roar of laughter and said: "Well, it looks like we won't be seeing the birthday boy anytime soon!"
And that's when the rather obvious actually hit me. Mahafsoun had transformed because she found (been reunited with, whatever) her soulmate and awakened. Hence, River is her soulmate. Oi, why is it always OUR family that has the weird shit happen to them???
So... I guess this has turned from a family birthday dinner to a circle dinner with the birthday part postponed until the lovebirds emerge from their nest, and AH!!! I just realized that it's probably either HIS room in the Manor, or hers!
Oi, my love, the very beat of my heart, the flame in my soul, since the kids are here until next Sunday for the Easter Hols, what say we abscond tonight? Right after dinner. Take off as a family to our Island in the Maldives to lay out and bask in the sun for the foreseeable future? River can Insta-owl us when it's safe to return. What do you think?
Sigh... I have to sign off now and go attempt to stop Elena from laughing her arse off at me. Apparently the look on my face was 'priceless' - which I don't appreciate at all.
Even if we can't find Heaven, I'll walk through hell with you, love you're not alone, 'cuz I'm gonna stand by you,
Draco