AN: Sorry for the spam posts, I just needed this off my desk ;D

Chapter 31 - Come What May

Harry was reading a translated DADA text from Africa about wandless DADA magic when he heard a knock on the door. Everyone else in the house was asleep.

He frowned at the clock on the wall, most people didn't knock on his door at eleven fifteen at night. He stood from the coffee, placing the book on the table. It was snowing pretty heavy outside and he wondered if someone had locked out of their house, but it wasn't a neighbor he saw when he opened the door.

Luna Lovegood on his doorstep, snowflakes crowned her golden blonde hair, her luminous eyes were wet with tears, and she was shivering because she was wearing a flowing spring dress -completely inadequate for dealing with the winter storm raging outside.

"Luna? Come in," he said putting a hand on her shoulder and half pulling her inside. He cast a warming charm on her but she continued to shiver.

Harry grabbed a blanket off the sofa and wrapped it around.

"I don't know where else to go, my father can't see me like this," she said, her voice breaking.

In front of the toasty fire, he realized that whatever she was feeling had nothing to do with the weather.

"What happened?" Harry asked, rubbing her back.

She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "He left me."

"Who left you?"

"Scamander."

"Newt Scamander?" Harry asked, Newt being the only Scamander he knew of.

"No, his grandson, Rolf. I fell in love with him. I fell in love," she whispered.

Harry pressed her tighter to him, "Oh, Luna."

The tears fell freely and she leaned into him, "Why can't there be more men like you?"

"Luna, I am so sorry you were hurt."

She pushed back from him, and as always her gaze seemed to cut through him, "Why does everyone leave me?"

Harry caught her hand in his and squeezed, "One day, Luna, you will find someone who sees you for you and that person will never leave."

"You can't know that!" she yelled at him.

Harry frowned, there was something wrong here, something worse than a broken heart. If this Rolf had done something, Harry would kill him. Or at least ensure that Rolf Scamander would spend every day for the rest of his pitiable life looking over his shoulder. "Did he do something to you?"

"No, no, he… yes- but he," she broke off and put her face in her hands in an attempt to muffle her sobs.

He hugged her, "Luna, Luna, honey, tell me what's happened?"

After a few minutes, she mumbled something.

"What was that?" Harry asked coaxingly.

She sucked in a ragged breath and pulled her hands from her flushed face "I'm pregnant," she said, "he left me and I'm pregnant."

"Luna-"

"I went to a muggle healer to be sure and they did an 'alt-ter'-sound and I saw them. Harry, I'm having twins. I can't do my job with two babies, I can't- What am I going to do? What am I going to do!?"

Harry opened his mouth to reply but Teddy -who had snuck out of bed and stood beside them, answered first.

"You're going to have a family," Teddy said, sounding far older than his five years. "And your Daddy is going to be a grandpa, and your family will love you and you will love them."

Luna turned to the boy and asked, "And you think it will work out?"

Teddy nodded, "If you love someone and you try, it will work out."

"Some things are just fairytales," she said softly.

"Family isn't a fairytale and if people stopped being afraid to show that they love each other than families would work better."

"Love will not put food on the table," Luna told him.

Teddy put his hands on his hips, scowling at her -which in Luna and Harry's eyes was adorable, "We love you and-"

Harry finished for him, "-we will not let you starve. Luna, you have family and friends, you'll get through this, we will all see you through this, come what may."

She nodded, but a new wash of tears came, "I don't know how to be a mother. I can hardly remember mine."

Harry pulled her chin up to face him, "You will be a wonderful mother, there are few women who care as deeply or are as kind as you. When those babies are born you won't know how you ever lived without them."

"I'm scared," she whispered, "I wasn't ready and I don't want to be alone."

Teddy came in to give her a hug, "You aren't alone, Luna."

Harry hugged them both, but he noticed the flush on Teddy's cheeks, the slight anger in his face at the idea that anyone would dare hurt Luna. It clicked for Harry why Teddy called Hermione, Aunt Hermione but never, ever, did he call Luna Aunt, even when Morwenna did. Teddy had a crush on Luna Lovegood.

Harry held Luna and his son. He had never seen Luna like this before. Never seen her so- so grounded, like swan downed by an arrow through the wing.

Whatever her relationship had been with Rolf Scamander, had ended some the ethereal light in her. As if the girl who fed treats to thestrals had been beaten down to believing that not only were the monsters real, but they were winning. It was as if her hope and faith in the future had been altered beyond recognition.

Harry started to make up the couch for her to stay the night.

Teddy roped her into reading a book with him, by the time they turned off the lights she had laughed and fear had left her eyes. And her light, her light rose like the full moon providing light in the darkness.

Harry helped tuck her in with another blanket after Teddy was in bed.

He kissed her forehead and whispered, "You are going to be a wonderful mother."

Luna closed her eyes, a single tear escaping, "I'm going to try, I am going to try my very hardest to be the mother they deserve."

Harry smiled gently, "That's all anyone could ask of us."

"Goodnight, Harry."

"Goodnight, Luna."

Luna watched the flames of the fire until the cinders burned out, wishing she had made different choices, wishing her heart had chosen someone more constant.

"You are sure this will work?" Lucius asked.

Narcissa gave him a withering look before tossing the last ingredient into the cauldron, "I still think we should have asked Andromeda for help."

"No, I owe this to him," he said. They were outside and the cauldron they were using began to smoke, which for the ritual they were using was exactly what was supposed to happen.

The smoke gathered into ball of light the size of galleon, and Lucius mounted his broom. The ball of light sparked before it began to follow some unseen path toward the horizon.

"Bring him back," Narcissa called, "he deserves a proper burial."

He motioned with his hand to let her know he heard her, but didn't turn around. The ball of light wasn't quite as fast as a snitch and it wasn't flying erotically, yet the night turned cold before the light winked out against a wall of a cave on the northern coast of Ireland. It was a long flight.

Lucius found the body behind a magicked wall. The body appeared to be rotting, and what had once been Regulus Black was only recognizable by his hair the rings on his fingers.

"This isn't right," Lucius said to himself. "What is wrong with his body?" And for a long time, he stared at the body he had freed from the wall. He could not perceive what was wrong with the body.

And then it occurred to him.

A body that had been dead for over twenty years shouldn't be rotting. The body wasn't in great shape, Regulus certainly wasn't recently dead, but his body had not been decaying for twenty years. Maybe two? Maybe five? It was hard to tell, the stone prison had saved the body from scavengers and most of the elements but still… he just didn't believe this could be the corpse of a man dead for twenty years.

He checked the walls but couldn't quite decipher the remnants of the curse.

He aparated back home. Together, Narcissa and he apparted back to the Irish coast. Narcissa made no reaction to Regulus's body -not surprising seeing as she had had twenty years to get over his absence and she hadn't cried then either, but she did summon a white sheet to lay over him.

It took them three hours of working in unison to pick apart the curse, to understand what it had been and how it had done its damage.

"Such old magic," Narcissa breathed, "I knew Tom was dangerous but this- Lucius, he could have enslaved us all."

"Nonsense, this curse didn't make him talk it just kept Regulus… preserved."

"I know this curse, it keeps the body alive, young, but the mind- he was starving, dehydrated, unable to so much as pass gas, and he was complete isolation, for over a decade."

"How long do you think his sanity lasted?"

"I wonder how he even perceived time," she murmured. "That was supposed to be one of the side effects, it was designed as a torture, but it wasn't so bad that it was unsurvivable," she said.

"How do you mean?" he asked.

"This curse wouldn't work on a monk or saint, not on someone who had the mental capacity to co-exist with their desires without acting on them. It fell out of fashion to even try this curse because it took too long for a person to crack and sometimes it made holy men out of them. Although, theoretically, there was once a buried city of people living like this, and their screaming brought down a mountain on the wizard who imprisoned them."

Lucius shuddered, "What happened to them? If it can keep people alive indefinitely, when does the curse fail?"

"When the caster dies," Narcissa said softly.

Lucius bit back a vulgar term, "Are you saying he was alive for all those years? That if we had looked for him, we might hav-"

"Yes," she said coldly.

He didn't bite his tongue this time. When he could think again, he asked, "How did he die exactly?"

"The curse keeps the body alive and youthful, but when Tom died, Reggie was still trapped in the stone."

"He was buried alive," Lucius breathed.

"Yes," she said unnecessarily.

Lucius went to the mouth of the cave, and stared out at the waves as they beat against the rocks.

Narcissa joined him, she didn't take his hand or say anything, just watched the waves crash again and again on the stones.

"When?" Lucius asked finally.

"When what?" she asked without looking at him.

"When do I stop making mistakes? When do the mistakes I made decades ago stop haunting me every damn day? In my every hour left in this world?"

"That isn't the question you need to be asking."

He looked at her profile, the wind lashing her braid behind her back, as wind tangled his own hair. "Then what is the right question?"

The air tasted salty and the coldness of the early morning feeling refreshingly bitter against their exposed skin.

She turned to him, her eyes colder than the ocean, and more enthralling, "We never stop making mistakes and we can never outrun them. The question isn't when will the consequences end, the question is when will you learn to live with them?"

Lucius turned back to the ocean and for every advantage he had been given in his life he would have traded them all to be given a fresh start.

But there would be no fresh start and he knew Narcissa was right. And yet he didn't have the faintest idea how to begin moving past his troubles. No idea how to embrace the pain and misery he had inflicted on the people he loved.

Poppy delivered Ophelia Hermione Potter at the crack of dawn in a cot at Hogwarts. Ophelia took many more hours to be born than her older sister, much to her mother's destress. And like her older sister and brother, Ophelia was born a metamorphmagus too.

Ophelia was less demanding than Morwenna had been -who was two and half years older than Ophelia. Even still, with the addition of a third child and Morwenna's ability to walk, Teddy and she were able to get into more trouble while their parents were occupied with the youngest.

Verona Weasley became quite the co-conspirator as did George's oldest daughter Roxanne Weasley. Teddy as the oldest should have been the leader, but he was more like the power behind Morwenna's thrown.

Quite contrary to both Narcissa's fears and Nymphadora's despair at Andromeda's name choices, Morwenna quite liked her name. Harry thought it was likely because as a daughter of his famous self and the daughter of the scandal that was Andromeda Tonks, there was very little she could have done to fit in.

Fitting in with the rest of the crowd did not seem to be a Potter trait. So not only did Teddy and Morwenna rock the noterarity, they flaunted it. This wasn't to say they were spoiled -at least not materialistic, but it did mean that they had a certain nonchalance when it came to rules and societal norms that had Headmistress Minerva McGonagall threatening to retire when Teddy turned eleven.

It seemed between Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hermione Granger much could be accomplished. Including the passing of anti-discrimination laws against certain peoples' backgrounds and personal health conditions, werewolves prominent amongst them.

When Draco himself evented a potion to not only subdue the beast during the full moon, but a potion that turned anyone with the werewolf curse into a 'real-er' or natural wolf, and in doing so creating a potion based transfiguration the Malfoy name was given new meaning. Whatever legacy Lucius Malfoy had created would be overshadowed in the history books by the Potion Master who invented -what amounted to, a cure to lycanthropy.

So even without heirs, the Malfoy name would live on. It was as good a time as any and Blaise convinced Draco to have a big wedding. They both wore outrageously ornate robes, Draco in blues and greys, Blaise in snow white, with beaded designs. On Blaise's side stood Daphne, Theo, and Astoria.

On Draco's was side stood Goyle, Harry, and Teddy. Morwenna was the ring barrier. The Potter children were -surprisingly, very well behaved. But Harry Potter being in an (ex) Death Eater's wedding still made the front page, much to Blaise's delight who had a copy framed.

The young couple -or rather Draco wasn't ready for children, but Blaise was already looking for possible adoptions.

Narcissa was helping.

For all that had been happened, Lucius was extremely proud of his son and possibly the greatest gift he could have given Draco and did give him was telling Draco, the wedding party, and -as there were lots of reporters who snuck their way in, the world just how very proud he was.

"My son," Lucius ended with, "Who became a better wizard, who became more of a man than I was ever able to achieve. And I am so incredibly proud to call you my son."

Harry was pacing the hallway trying to rock Ophelia to sleep and keep her from waking the Teddy and Morwenna. They could have expanded the house, but both Andromeda and Harry were reluctant to do so. For one it was cozier and two it was easier square footage to check for booby-traps.

Morwenna and Teddy didn't play pranks. The word 'prank' was far too mild a description for the trouble the two children managed to concoct. Harry prayed Ophelia would be less -less depabilicale then her sister. As Ophelia was all of three months old, Harry thought he had time to shelve his worries, but then Morwenna wasn't three yet and Harry couldn't even imagine the trouble she was going to get into. There were no maybe's or what if's about it, Morwenna was very much a Potter and a Black.

Andromeda stormed out of the bathroom and almost slammed him into the wall.

He glared at her and whispered, "Watch it, I have a baby."

Ophelia, however, was contentedly cueing up at her mother, not the least bit bothered by the fury raging in the older witch's face.

"What happened?" Harry whisper-asked.

"This is the last one," Andromeda warned.

Completely at a loss, he asked, "Um, last one of what?"

"This is the last baby we are having, I'm done."

Harry shifted Ophelia in his arms, he was even more confused now. Ophelia had been Andromeda's idea, not his (though, admittedly he probably did want her more)."Alright," he said, looking her over trying to figure where all the extra emotions were coming from.

"No," Andromeda said, putting a hand to her abdomen, "This is the last one."

Harry's eyes widened as he tried to comprehend what she was saying, "You don't mean- I mean you were just- we just-"

"I'm only two months pregnant but-"

"Two months!" Harry exclaimed. That meant that the first night after Andromeda had been feeling better… Oh, Merlin.

"Shhhh," she shushed him and crossed the space between them. Reaching around him and the baby, she pulled him into a kiss. Ophelia giggled between them and reached for her mother's breasts.

When Andromeda pulled back, Harry was wearing lopsided grin, his emerald eyes glowing with happiness.

Like dance, she pulled down a shoulder of her dress, exposing her right breast, followed by Harry shifting Ophelia into a nursing position in Andromeda's arms.

She asked quite unnecessarily, "Are you happy?"

"Andromeda," Harry said, "I'm the happiest man on the planet." And then he claimed another kiss.

AN: Thank you to all the people who supported me in this. Also the people who waited for the updates. Harry Potter Verse has been tough for me to get into lately and without the betas editing this became a chore especially as I am writing other things including my own novel.

The scraps of the sequel to this story still exist if you look up JacobApples on fanfiction dot net, however, though I will never finish it.

Why?

Because When the Dragon Spoke to the Moon and Deadly Belladonna cannibalized it.

Just as Laughing All the Way to London to scraps from Broken Reflections and Disorder of the Phoenix.

Future HP stories from me?: When the Dragon Spoke to the Moon (Lord of the Rings Crossover), Mischief Far From Managed (MCU Crossover), Deadly Belladonna (Second Arch Continues with next Fantastic Beast Movie), and coming soon; When All the World's Against You, an irreverent time travel, where Harry causes trouble for everyone.

Thank You Again to the Reviews Who Keep Me Posting ;D