- vingt quatre -

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Cepheus, Albus and James, are perfectly healthy newborns by everyone's standards. They're each born an hour apart, but even so, Cepheus is born a day before the other two boys and cries the loudest after they check his lungs. Albus is the youngest and after a week at home, he still hasn't made a noise other than soft crying when he's in need, but the doctor says he's fine. Harry lets out a deep breath, because his life has always been unsure, but now it's stable. Once he and Draco are off bed rest, he runs to the boy's nursery because he can hold his sons and sing to them and read to them and cuddle them...until Draco wants a turn.

They're all round, pale brown bundles, but there was no surprise when Cepheus was the only dirty blond, even as he opened those forest green eyes. James, who giggled the most, has a pale patch of skin on his back which curls around interestingly that Harry is almost sure are going to be a pair of antlers, but he also has Draco's grey eyes. Albus, who is a spitting image of Harry in the way that Scorpius used to be of Draco, is breathtaking.

He wants to cry because the stress of pregnancy leading up to this was always beautiful and now he knows for sure that his baby boys are healthy. And that's all that matters.

--:--

"Congratulations, Hogwarts Graduates!" says McGonagall through a sonorous charm that echoes in the excited silence of the Great Hall, before hoots and hollers and cheers break out from parents, students and teachers all the same. These were the last of the children who's families were torn apart by the war. This was them proving that those efforts were not in vain. It was something to celebrate.

Harry and Draco and all Teddy's siblings sat in the audience because his parents had decided to take a couple of years off to raise the five bouncing babies they seemed to have acquired in the last few years and didn't want to intrude. They insisted it was his day, but he doesn't think he would have gotten there without them.

He thought that he should probably be more overwhelmed than he actually was as he tossed his pointed hat into the air with the rest of his class. He had barely turned 18 a month ago and now school was over. He was leaving a place that, for the last 7 years, had been as close to home as anything he could imagine and now he was moving into a new one. His Gam had left him her house in her will. He knew he had a home at the Manor if he still wanted it, but his Pops let him choose what he wanted to do. And he knew nothing would be the same as his Gam's house, full of color and warm memories, equally as close to the ocean as it was to the country. He was old enough to make these decisions. He was old enough to try and live on his own.

He cried when he finished moving in and straightening up a bit. He had his entire life to make this house feel like himself, but walking into the living room kills him. His Gam's favorite chair is empty, but her sewing is still laid across the seat as if she had went to stir a pot and would be coming right back. He sobbed harder, because regardless of her death and the sadness it strikes in his heart, this house would always feel like coming home.

He realized he was shivering and decided to light the fireplace, before sitting down in front of it with his arms wrapped around his legs, chin tucked in as he cried into his knees.

He doesn't tell his dads, but he suspects his pops already knows.

--:--

"Correct me if I'm wrong," starts an almost 20 year old Teddy playfully while on video chat with a Hogwarts pacing Scorpius,"but we never had parties this big for our birthdays."

"We have different birthdays and typically they're during school," Scorpius said with a fond smile, while running a hand through his own hair. "We had to study. We just never had time for huge birthday parties.

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