The Lucky Ones

'Do you really think it will be okay?' Rose Weasley asked in an undertone as she sat on a boat crossing the lake. She was wearing black robes and her black hat, she had just graduated from Hogwarts.

Scorpius Malfoy smiled at her, 'It will be fine,' he said calmly.

'But my Dad hates your Dad,' Rose said, biting her lip.

'As kids yeah,' Scorpius agreed, 'but they're both men now, they aren't going to hold old grudges.'

'You'd be surprised,' Rose said, thinking about her Father and how he did hold grudges for a ridiculously long time.

'Stop worrying Rose,' Scorpius said, leaning over and kissing her, 'it will be fine, I promise.'

Rose nodded, but she wasn't convinced. Tonight was the first time her parents and Scorpius's parents were meeting since they had started dating almost a year ago.

'Dad, promise not to be mean,' Rose begged as she and her parents got ready to apparate to Malfoy Manor.

'Don't worry Rose,' Hermione said with a smile, 'I've warned your Father to be on his best behaviour.'

'I've come to terms with you dating a Malfoy,' Ron said, wrinkling his nose at the word Malfoy, 'but that doesn't mean I'm going to treat his Dad like he's my best friend.'

'Stop being immature Ron,' Hermione said with a dark look at her Husband, 'if anyone has reason for not wanting to go to Malfoy Manor tonight it isn't you.'

Rose didn't understand this comment, but she didn't ask, that dark look in her Mothers eyes meant that it had something to do with the war, and unless they could help it, her parents didn't talk about the war.

Hermione put her hand on Rose's shoulder and said, 'Ready when you are sweetheart.'

Rose nodded and spun on her heel. She had passed her apparition test first time, but she still hated it. Her parents followed, and Rose took a deep breath as she walked through the gates and started to make her way up the path.

Ron slipped his hand into Hermione's as they looked up at the white manor house, it brought back incredibly bad memories, and Ron could see the haunted look in Hermione's eyes. She pulled the long sleeves of her dress further down her arm, making sure her scar was covered. Ron sighed, he hated that Rose was dating the son of the man who had done this to Hermione, he knew it had been Draco's Aunt, but Ron still held the man responsible for the scars that she was so self-conscious about.

Rose got to the door and rang the bell, in seconds it opened and Scorpius grinned at his girlfriend and her parents, 'Hi,' he said as he opened the door wider, 'come in.'

Ron and Hermione followed Rose into the house, the entrance hall was familiar in a horrible way. Standing slightly awkwardly in the entrance hall, and looking very nervous were Draco and Astoria Malfoy.

Draco stepped forward first and held out his hand to Ron, 'School grudges should be forgotten, after all we are men now.'

Ron gave a stiff nod and shook Draco's hand. Hermione smiled at the man and shook his hand, 'It's nice to see you,' she said and he smiled and nodded. It was easier for them, they worked in similar departments so they occasionally made small talk at work. Ron hadn't seen Draco since the final battle.

'This is my wife, Astoria,' Draco said to Ron and Hermione, and the woman stepped forward and shook both of their hands. She was gorgeous, with tanned skin and blonde hair.

'We're eating in the informal dining room tonight,' Draco said, leading the group to a door to the left of the entrance hall, 'I didn't think it would be a good idea to eat in the formal dining hall after…' he trailed off, but Hermione nodded, 'Thank you Draco, that's very considerate of you.'

'It was Astoria's idea, actually,' Draco said, smiling at his wife who nodded, she seemed kind of shy.

They all sat down at the table, with Rose and Scorpius next to each other, Ron and Hermione across from them and Draco and Astoria at opposite ends of the table.

As the first course was served, nobody said anything, and the air was extremely awkward.

'So,' Hermione said, in an aim to create small talk, 'where do you work Astoria?'

'Oh,' Astoria said, surprised that Hermione was talking to her, 'I work in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, I'm that annoying person who writes out the underage magic letters.'

Hermione chuckled and said, 'my son, Hugo, knows them well. I think he got two in his 1st year.'

'Scorpius was just as bad,' Draco said, glancing at his son who grinned guiltily, 'if it wasn't for the fact his Mother worked in the department he'd have been kicked out of Hogwarts.'

Rose smiled at Scorpius, he was slightly rebellious, one of the reasons she loved him and one of the reasons her Father disapproved so much.

'How is work, Hermione?' Draco asked, again attempting to make small talk.

'Oh it's not bad,' Hermione replied, 'thanks to your new experimental drug for dragon pox our clinical trial is going great.'

'That's fantastic,' Draco said happily, they worked side by side sometimes, with Hermione working as a healer in experimental methods and Draco leading the Department of Experimental Potions.

'So, what do you want to do Rose? Now that school is over?' Draco asked, kindly, but also curious.

Rose smiled a little sheepishly, 'I'd quite like to go into the experimental potions business actually.'

'Really?' Draco asked with a smile, 'that's fantastic. I suppose given that you have gotten O's for everything in Potions according to Scorp, that makes sense.'

Rose nodded, and Draco continued, 'I can put a good word in for you at the department, maybe get you a starter job as a junior researcher.'

Rose opened her mouth to say that she would love that, but her Father got there first.

'Stop trying to get in my daughters good books,' Ron said angrily, 'you're only trying to get her a job so she likes you, and I don't even know why you're bothering to do that. We both know you don't want this relationship to last, you don't want your precious little only heir marrying a blood traitor.'

'Ron!' Hermione said angrily, 'don't talk about our daughter like that!'

'Well she is!' Ron shouted, 'she's the daughter of a blood traitor and a muggle-born, she couldn't get much lower unless she was a muggle-born! He doesn't want her and Scorpius to get married!'

Rose looked close to tears, and Hermione glared at Ron, 'well then I'm the lowest of the low am I?' she asked.

'I wasn't trying to get in her good books,' Draco said calmly, 'I'd just like to help her get started in an industry that's difficult to break into.'

'And for your information,' Astoria said bitterly, 'Draco married me, and my family are blood traitors too. We want our son to be with who makes him happy, blood doesn't matter, all blood status does is cause people pain. Scorpius will marry someone who he loves.'

'It doesn't matter if that person is a pureblood, half-blood, blood traitor, muggle-born or something completely different,' Draco agreed, 'the only person who seems to think that matters is you.'

Ron shook his head in annoyance, 'You're lying,' he accused, 'I don't know what game you're playing, but I'm sick of it!'

'Why can't you just accept that we want our son to be happy? The war was a long time ago, why can't you just forget?' Astoria asked, frustrated at Ron's behaviour.

'Forget?' Ron asked angrily, 'Forget what exactly? Forget what happened in this house for example? Well I'm sorry that I can't forget the fact you tortured my wife!' he bellowed at Draco, 'that you're the reason for a scar on her arm telling her every time she looks down she's a mudblood! I'm sorry if I can't forget her screams of agony while I was locked in your fucking basement! I don't want my daughter to marry your son, I don't want her to become a Malfoy, because I hate everything you stand for! The war might have been a long time ago, but the scars are still there!'

'Ron, shut up!' Hermione said loudly, 'I'm here, I'm comfortable and you are the one whose shouting and acting like an idiot. If I can forgive Draco then you sure as hell can. He didn't torture me, his Aunt did, and he didn't just stand by and watch. You weren't there, you didn't see his Father restraining him! He was a victim of the war just as much as we were, imagine your family forcing you to obey an evil man, forcing you to join him, join him or die! At least you had a choice, Draco never had a choice!'

'Whose side are you on? Your Husband's or that bastards?' Ron asked bitterly and Hermione gave her Husband a stern glare, 'at this point in time, Draco's, because he's the person in this argument who isn't acting like a teenager.'

Ron didn't say anything and Scorpius shook his head angrily, he pushed his chair back so that it fell with an almighty crash and said, 'do I know anything about my family? You didn't tell me anything about the fact my girlfriends Mother was tortured in my own house! What else don't I know?' he shook his head and stormed from the room.

As the door slammed behind him Rose burst into tears and ran out of the room. Astoria got to her feet, but Draco shook his head and said, 'I'll talk to him, he needs to hear it from me.'

Astoria gave a small nod, and Draco left the room. At the same time that this occurrence was happening, Hermione had gotten to her feet and glared at Ron, 'You caused this, I'll deal with the consequences. After all, that's the way our relationship has always been.'

With this she too left to go and find Rose.

Draco knew where his son was from the moment he had stormed from the room. He jogged up the stairs to the first floor where Scorpius's bedroom was. He paused and heard his son moving around in the room, he knocked on the door.

'If that's you Mother, I don't want to talk to you,' Scorpius said bitterly through the door.

'It's me Scorp,' Draco said softly and after a moment the lock on the door clicked and Draco smiled. He had a bond with his son that Astoria could never equal or really get a grasp on. He pushed the door open and walked in, Scorpius was sitting on his bed looking extremely unhappy.

'Hey,' Scorpius said miserably as his Father sat down next to him on the bed.

'Want to talk about it?' Draco asked, trying not to push his son.

Scorpius nodded, and Draco sighed, he wondered if he might have to have this conversation with his son. Ever since Scorpius had come home at Christmas and told him that he was dating a Gryffindor girl called Rose.

Hermione couldn't contain her anger with Ron as she left the dining room, she wasn't sure where Rose might have gone, and she saw Draco's feet disappearing at the top of the staircase. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, she didn't want Rose to see her upset. She surveyed the entrance hall and saw a door ajar across the hall.

As Hermione crossed the hall she bit her lip, she had wondered if she might need to have a talk with her daughter about her past. Ever since Rose had written to her about Scorpius asking her out Hermione had thought about it, but she had never said anything to Ron. She sighed as she walked through the door into what was clearly the living room, or one of many. Rose was sitting with her back to Hermione on the sofa.

'Can I talk to you sweetheart?' Hermione asked quietly, but Rose still jumped, she obviously hadn't heard Hermione come through the door.

Rose turned around, her eyes were bluer than usual because she'd been crying, she nodded at her Mother so Hermione pushed the door shut and sat down with her daughter on the sofa.

'Scorp, when I went to school…well I wasn't a good person and your Grandfather was part of the reason for that. He told me that muggle-borns were dirty and impure,' Draco explained, 'and I met a girl when I arrived at Hogwarts who was a muggle-born.'

'And you were horrible to her?' Scorpius guessed.

'Yeah, I was,' Draco admitted sadly, 'but I really liked her. She was smart and funny and even though I made fun of her, she was beautiful.'

'What's the point of this story?' Scorpius asked, and Draco sighed, 'You'll see if you just listen.'

'I went through Hogwarts as a Slytherin jack-ass,' Draco told his son who sniggered and said, 'I can believe that.'

Draco smiled slightly, he would usually have told Scorpius off, but not today, 'and she was a fantastic person who rightly never wanted anything to do with me…'

'He was horrible to me when I was at Hogwarts,' Hermione said to her daughter, who she already had enthralled with the start of her story about a Slytherin boy.

'Why?' Rose asked as she sat with crossed legs, watching her Mother with interest.

'Well, things were much more complicated then, as I'm sure you know. Slytherins were all purebloods and he looked down on me because I was a muggle-born,' Hermione explained, 'but it wasn't really his opinion, it was the opinion that was forced on him by his family.'

Rose nodded, 'but you didn't end up together, because Dad is a Gryffindor.'

'We didn't end up together,' Hermione agreed, 'the war made things completely different for everyone. I went off to fight with Dad and Uncle Harry, and he was on the other side, working for the man we were trying to bring down.'

'So what did you do?' Rose asked, intrigued by this romance she had known nothing about.

'Well I forgot about it while I was fighting, there were so many more things to worry about then.' Hermione said, trying not to get lost in the bad memories from the war, 'but we came into contact once and I could see the pain he was in, I could see that he wasn't happy and I felt sorry for him.'

'But he didn't switch sides?' Rose asked, and Hermione shook her head.

'Why didn't you just switch sides?' Scorpius asked, frowning at his Father, 'if you really loved her then you should have just helped the light.'

'It wasn't that simple Scorp,' Draco said sadly, 'looking back for you it's easy to say that, but you weren't there in that situation.'

'So what did you do then?' Scorpius asked, and Draco replied, 'Well I couldn't do anything. If I tried to run away I would have been killed, if I had joined the light I would have been killed.'

'So you just did nothing? You just let people die?'

'Yes,' Draco replied, his voice breaking a little, 'I did Scorpius and I still regret it every day of my life.'

Seeing his Father this way seemed to shut Scorpius up, he looked at Draco in surprise, and got another shock when he saw that he was close to tears.

'Sorry,' Scorpius said, feeling instantly guilty.

Draco shook his head, 'Don't apologise, just try and understand how it felt back then.'

Scorpius nodded and let his Father continue.

'I saved her life in the final battle, I don't think she even noticed…a death eater was on his way towards her and I stunned him,' Draco said, his eyes were far away.

'We saved his life twice,' Hermione said to her daughter, 'even though Dad and Uncle Harry didn't like him much. We saved him twice, and I'm so glad we did.'

'What happened to him after the war?' Rose asked, still intrigued by her Mothers tale.

'He became a good person,' Hermione said with a smile, 'he's a good person today.'

'Did you ever tell him how you felt?' Rose asked with wide eyes.

'I did,' Hermione said honestly, 'when the war was over I needed to go and find your grandparents.'

'Because you had obliviated them to save them,' Rose said with a vague nod, she had heard this story.

'I went to Australia because that's where I had sent them,' Hermione explained to her daughter, 'and I didn't know how long it would take me to find them there so I left at the start of the summer.'

'Were you and Dad together then?' Rose asked, and Hermione shook her head, 'No, we didn't start dating until a few months later.'

'So what happened in Australia?'

'Well, I went to find my parents, and I found him instead…'

'Why were you in Australia?' Scorpius asked in surprise.

'After the war I just wanted to get away from the world,' Draco admitted to his son, 'I wanted to get away from your Grandfather, because he was in the middle of a trial.'

'Is that when he got sent to Azkaban?' Scorpius asked, he had never known his Grandfather on his Father's side.

Draco nodded, it was still painful to think about his Father, 'It was, and your Grandmother was upset, so I decided to go to Australia because one of my friends who died in the war had family there.'

'So you met her in Australia?'

'Yeah, she was looking for her parents, she sent them there to keep them safe,' Draco replied, again lost in memories, 'and we ended up meeting one night in a bar in Sydney,' he smiled as he recounted the story, 'without her friends there to tell me I was an asshole, and without my family to tell me she was impure we realised we were quite alike.'

'So what happened?' Rose asked eagerly.

'Well, he helped me find my parents,' Hermione said with a smile, 'and I started falling in love with him.'

'What went wrong? Why did you come home and end up with Dad?' Rose asked with a frown.

'Well it was complicated back then Rose. The world we knew and loved would never have accepted us.'

'They wouldn't have accepted you because he was a Slytherin?' Rose asked, surprised and horrified by this.

'No,' Draco said as he stared out of Scorpius's window, he was far away in his thoughts, but turned back to his intrigued son, 'part of the reason it wouldn't have been accepted was because she was a Gryffindor, but it was mostly because she was a hero in the war, and I was the outlawed git who had screwed up a lot.'

'So nothing happened?'

'Nah, well, we had a fling, and then we went our separate ways and came back to England,' Draco said, nearing the end of his story.

'And you married Mum,' Scorpius said.

Draco nodded once more.

'But you still love the Gryffindor girl don't you?'

'Yes, I think a part of me will always love him,' Hermione told her daughter, 'but that doesn't mean I love your Father any less.'

'I understand Mum,' Rose said, and she did, she was old enough now.

'I guess what I'm trying to get across to you Rose, is don't listen to anything your Father says. If you love Scorpius and he makes you happy then be with him, and be happy…'

'Because I never got that chance, and I wish I had,' Draco said sincerely, so I want you and Rose to be as happy as you can be.'

'Thanks Dad,' Scorpius said after a moment of silence, and then after much deliberation he hugged Draco who smiled as he wrapped his arms around his now adult son.

'Don't worry about it, now on you go, get back into the dining room and apologise to your Mother,' Draco said, ruffling his sons hair.

'Ugh Dad, don't treat me like I'm 5,' Scorpius joked as he escaped from his Fathers grasp and left the room.

Draco smiled after his son and followed him down the stairs a few seconds later.

'Now come on,' Hermione said as she stood from the sofa, 'we had better go and apologise to your Father.'

'Why do you need to apologise?' Rose asked as she too got to her feet.

'I was a little rude to him after you left,' Hermione said with a sheepish smile.

'Did you lose your temper at him again?' Rose asked in amusement and Hermione chuckled, 'Slightly.'

Rose laughed and headed back to the dining room, Hermione watched her go, leaning in the doorway for a moment. She had taken a few steps out into the entrance hall when she was stopped by a familiar voice.

'Hermione.'

She stopped in her tracks as he approached her.

'Draco,' she said politely, they talked often at work, and even worked on projects together, but there was something different tonight, it was probably because of what they had both just talked to their children about.

'That could have been us,' Draco said thoughtfully, looking at the door to the dining room that his son and Hermione's daughter had just gone through.

'Not unless we'd been born 10 years later,' Hermione said, somewhat sadly.

'Don't you sometimes wish we had been?' Draco asked longingly.

'Sometimes,' Hermione admitted, as she watched the door to the dining room, 'but we weren't and we can't change that now.'

'Don't you wish we could just go back and stay in Australia?' Draco asked Hermione, glancing at her and catching her eye, she looked torn.

'Occasionally, but I couldn't have never come back, I couldn't have stayed away from Harry…or Ron,' Hermione said, almost as is if she was convincing herself.

Draco gave a small nod.

'Are you happy with Astoria, Draco?' Hermione asked gently.

'Not as happy as I would have been with you,' Draco replied instantly, causing a faint blush to rise in Hermione's cheeks, 'it was a convenience marriage Hermione, you know that, why do you think we only have one child? We didn't want anymore physical contact with each other.'

'That's kind of sad,' Hermione said, glancing at Draco sympathetically.

'That's the way pureblood marriages work,' Draco said distastefully, 'are you happy with Wea-Ron?'

Hermione shrugged and leant back against the wall, 'Yes, and no, it isn't ideal. We argue a lot, and disagree on everything.'

'And whenever you want to talk about anything intellectual you spend lunch in my office,' Draco remarked.

Hermione smiled at the truth in this comment, 'Yes, but I suppose in ways, I am happy.'

'Not as happy as you could have been though,' Draco said, and Hermione agreed but she couldn't put that into words, so she just nodded.

'Well then I hope Scorp and Rose can have what we didn't,' Draco said, taking Hermione's arm and leading her towards the dining room.

'So do I,' Hermione admitted as they reached the door.

Draco dropped his hand from her arm and opened the door to the dining room.

When they walked back in, Draco and Hermione were surprised to see their other halves in an animated discussion.

'I know, everyone says that we aren't on the up, but we've played better this season than we have for the last 3 years!'

'And it's not like we're last in the league!'

'Exactly!'

Draco and Hermione shared an amused smile, so apparently Astoria was a Chudley Cannons fan. They took their seats at the table once more, and everybody apologised.

Nobody caught the look exchanged across from the table between Draco and Hermione, no one apart from Rose and Scorpius who smiled to themselves, all it did was confirm a suspicion.

The End :)

A/N: Just a oneshot, hope you all liked it :D