A Second Look - A Dramione Story

Chapter 23

Warning: This is not my story. It is from RiverWriter on ao3.

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Hermione was way beyond merely seeing red. She was now blind with rage as Kingsley marched her through the Ministry with a firm hand to her back, Scorpius perched on her hip. She assumed that Draco was following them, though at this point she almost wished he wasn't.

Boxing Day had been such a good day, it had been just the three of them, hanging out, spending time together and when Scorpius was napping Draco and Hermione celebrated their decision to move in together some more by making love. It would be the day Hermione thought of as her first day at home, with her family.

And then they were awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of shouting throughout the house. By the time she'd identified the voice as belonging to her best friend, Draco had jumped out of bed and gone to confront him, naked.

When she reached them after hastily pulling on a robe, Harry had his back turned to Draco who was just standing there shamelessly with his hands on his hips. "I'm sorry, what did you say? I didn't quite catch that, Hermione and I were in the middle of something that I'd really like to get back to," he taunted the other wizard who was, somewhat alarmingly, dressed in his auror uniform, confirming that this was not a social call.

The sounds of Scorpius' cries filtered down the hall and, more irritated than embarrassed by the entire situation and Draco's method of dealing with it, she left him to speak with Harry and went to tend to Scorpius.

"Thank you for waking my son," she heard him say as she walked away.

She retrieved the baby and when she returned to the corridor neither Harry nor Draco were anywhere to be seen. She found the latter in the master bedroom pulling on a pair of boxers.

"Couldn't you have done that before?" She sighed, allowing her annoyance to come through in her voice and rubbing Scorpius' back as he whimpered against her shoulder.

"There was an intruder in my house, you expected me to pause to pull on clothes?" He scoffed as he began to search his dresser for a shirt.

She narrowed her eyes at him, not buying his excuse. "You knew it was Harry, you just wanted to embarrass him."

He only shrugged. "We have to go down to the Ministry," he said, in lieu of really answering her.

"Why, what's wrong?" She knew that something must have happened, but Harry was prone to exaggeration when it came to her safety and she assumed he'd just come to check on her.

"There was an incident at Malfoy Manor, an attempted break in. They were almost through the wards before my father noticed and locked them down again."

"Well, that's... troubling, but why do they need us in the middle of the night? You don't live there anymore and I'm on holiday."

"They left a calling card, it was the Lestranges, we're considered targets which is- I assume- why your best friend thought it appropriate to just come storming in here in the middle of the night without bothering to contact us first."

"Shit," she muttered, placing Scorpius on the bed so that she could get dressed. She should have known something like this would happen. Their relationship had actually made front page news in the Prophet the morning after the Yule Gala and it had certainly upset plenty of people, and now it had apparently brought some more unstable elements out of the woodwork- the timing of this couldn't be a coincidence. She assumed Harry would be retrieving Andromeda as well, the Lestrange brothers had a history of going after her and Teddy too, she hoped he at least remembered to call first, that witch would curse first and ask questions later.