Cheeky

I

Little Balls of Sunshine

Draco sat down in front of Pansy at a table off to the side of a room full of stone tables. It was dank, uncomfortable, and lit by candlelight--there were no windows. There were Dementors stationed around random areas of the room, but it was a uniformed wizard who brought Draco to his seat.

"I assumed a Dementor was going to bring you out here," Pansy said bluntly, her hands folded in front of her on the table.

Draco didn't respond. The Ministry thought too many Dementors in the visitation area would begin to hurt the non-inmates of Azkaban, so they didn't allow them to fill the room.

"I missed you," Draco said instead.

"Why did we have to run away?" Pansy didn't sound particularly sad, mostly just angry.

"Pansy--"

"You would've done less time if you hadn't run away."

"I'll be out soon." He started to slide his arm slowly across the table toward hers.

She swatted it away dismissively and he flinched dramatically, lightly touching his forearm.

"No touching," said the guard, from his position against the wall.

Pansy ignored him. "What's wrong with your arm?"

"Nothing." His arm recoiled back toward his body, like an animal withering from attack. "I'll be out in less than two years, Pansy."

"I have something to tell you."

"What?" There was deep emotion in his steel eyes. It wasn't sadness, but it was dramatic pain and weariness. He was growing tired after being in Azkaban for only three months.

Pansy looked down at her hands. "I'm pregnant." She glanced upwards and his eyes were boring into hers. His mouth was hanging open, just slightly. This time it was Pansy's hands who tentatively reached for Draco's.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, intertwining his fingers with hers.

She paused. "I'm going to keep it."

"Are you sure? I mean, I'll be in here--"

"I'm keeping it, Draco."

"Okay. If you're sure--"

"I'm sure."

"No touching," the guard repeated. "Time's up." He stepped forward and lifted Draco out of his seat by his bicep. "Ligare," he mumbled, and Draco's wrists were immediately attached behind his back. He looked back briefly at his pregnant girlfriend with those intense eyes of his. She looked angry and bored.

"Harry, have you seen my navy shirt with the black buttons?"

"No..." was Harry's response, sounding almost a little puzzled.

Ginny poked her head out of the bedroom, and stared at her boyfriend who was lazily preparing his breakfast in what could barely even be called a kitchen. "Why do you sound so confused?"

"Well, why should I know where your shirt is?"

"I don't know. Maybe because you live here, too?"

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

"Oh, my God," Ginny mumbled disgruntledly, turning back into the room and continuing to toss clothes left and right in an eager search for her top. "You know, Harry, maybe it would help if you tidied up once, in a while!" She stumbled upon a pair of smelly old socks and angrily threw them on Harry's side of the bed. "Christ..."

He joined her in the bedroom, casually eating cereal out of a mug. "I need to be tidying up? You're not exactly the Queen of Neat, either."

She rolled her eyes and turned to face him, holding an army green longsleeved shirt in one hand, and a pair of Harry's--thankfully clean--boxers daintily by the elastic in the other. "Maybe you could help me?"

"Alright, but I don't really see why."

Ginny scoffed. "You are so rude--it's unbelievable."

"I'm rude? The first thing you said to me this morning was basically an accusation that I lost your shirt."

She narrowed her eyes. "Sorry that, since you're the other person I live with, I just assumed that perhaps you'd stumbled across my shirt during one of your lazy romps around the apartment."

"Lazy romps? What language are you even speaking?"

"Ugh!" she grunted. She threw the shirt and boxers at him and went back to rummaging through the heaps of clothes on the floor. They got there because she had strewn everything around room when she first went about looking for her shirt. "Shouldn't you be getting ready for work, anyway?"

Harry shrugged and started out of the bedroom.

"So you're not going to help me? You're a fabulous boyfriend, you know that? Sometimes I don't even understand why I'm still dating you." She stormed into the bathroom. "Oh, bugger," she said after a short pause.

"What now?"

"I'm pregnant."

Almost four years later, Ginny was walking through Diagon Alley with her son, Liam Albus Potter, on her way to visit her brothers at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.

"Mummy, can we go in there?" Liam asked, pointing to a store on their right. Ginny didn't even bother to look; he had been pointing at everything that they'd past and attempting to drag her over to it (needless to say, without much luck as he was about a quarter Ginny's size).

"No, Liam."

"What about there? Look at the animals!"

"No, Liam. Don't you want to visit your uncles?"

"No, I want to go to the stores."

"Well, not today."

"Mummy, can I get ice cream?"

Ginny stopped and looked down at her son. "Liam, we're going to visit Fred and George right now. Maybe if you're good I'll buy you some ice cream afterwards."

At that, Liam snapped his gaping mouth shut and faced forward. Ginny was about to continue down the street with her son when something caught her eye. It was a boy with strikingly white-blonde hair crouched in front of a girl with similarly coloured hair, who looked about Liam's age, outside the ice cream shop. It was, without a doubt, Draco Malfoy. Ginny's immediate reaction was to wonder what in Merlin's name he was doing standing in the middle of Diagon Alley. Her second thought was to wonder why he wasn't getting harassed. And her third was that she couldn't help but notice something innocent and sincere about the way he was crouched over, talking to his daughter.

She felt a light tug on her hand and remembered Liam. She continued down the street with her son. The two entered Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes to find it not unbearably crowded, but the first thing that Ginny noticed was her unsupervised nephew sitting behind the counter.

"Atticus," she said, sounding concerned and approaching the five-year-old. "Where's your dad?"

Atticus jutted a casual thumb towards the storerooms behind him.

"Will you go get him for me, please?"

Atticus relented and scampered off to find his dad. Luckily, he wasn't quite at an age of too much rebellion, yet. Liam, however, was somehow already trying desperately to loosen his mother's grip on his hand. He was currently attempting to peel each finger off one by one, but--probably just to mess with him--Ginny wouldn't let go.

"Mummy," Liam grumbled.

She looked down at him.

"Can you let me go so I can look at the toys?"

"No." Last time, Liam ran off and ate a Canary Cream.

"Ginny! How nice of you to come visit your big brothers." Fred and George had just entered from the depths of the storage areas. George had greeted his sister, with little Atticus in tow.

Ginny frowned at him. "Why on earth did you leave Atticus out here to run the shop?"

"I didn't leave him out here to run the shop. I merely went in back for a brief moment."

Ginny raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Liam was pulling on her fingers again. "Mummy, can I go in back with Atticus?"

Ginny looked at her brothers.

"Oh, calm down, Sadie's back there."

"Good." Ginny released her grip on Liam. Sadie was George's wife. Ginny often wondered why, as crazy as they were, Fred and George managed to marry such sane women.

"What's the matter with you?" Fred wondered, stepping behind the counter. "Not getting enough--"

"Stop."

Her brothers laughed.

Ignoring them, Ginny moved onto a different subject. "As I was walking through Diagon Alley, just a minute ago, you know who I passed?"

"Mad-Eye Moody," guessed Fred.

"McGonagall?" asked George.

"Michael Corner."

"Oliver Wood."

"Hagrid?"

"No! Stop." Ginny made a point to glare before continuing. "Draco Malfoy."

"Draco Malfoy?" Fred repeated. "Why would that ferret ever show his face in public?"

"That's what I thought."

"When did he get out of Azkaban?" George enquired.

Ginny shrugged. "I don't know. He had a little girl with him, though."

Fred gasped. "An illegal love slave!"

"Fred." Ginny looked as though she was about to hex her brother into oblivion. "It was his daughter."

"You sure?" Fred asked.

"Yes. She had his hair and everything."

"How old was she?" asked George.

"She looked about Liam's age."

This time both Fred and George gasped, and it seemed just slightly more genuine. "You know what that means," said George.

"What?"

"She'll be in Liam's class at Hogwarts."

Ginny was shocked. That hadn't even occurred to her.

"If the git has half a brain he won't send his kid to Hogwarts," muttered Fred.

"Excuse me, how much are these?" A woman had approached the counter and was brandishing a box of Extendable Ears.

"That would be ten sickles," George answered.

Ginny refocused back to their conversation. "Well, he's prancing around Diagon Alley with his daughter, isn't he?"

"Yeah, but why would Malfoy want to send his kid to Hogwarts?" Fred noted. "He always bragged about how his father was going to send him somewhere else, anyway."

"Let's hope that he's smart enough to not make his father's mistake," said George.

Ginny was about to say something, but felt slightly hesitant to bring it up.

"How much is this?" shouted someone from across the shop, holding up a box of something Ginny couldn't distinguish from where she was.

"Eight sickles and two knuts," was Fred's hasty reply.

Ginny's mouth got the best of her. "He did try and join our side, though."

Fred and George frowned at her.

"It was all a ploy," George stated.

"Yeah, some really, really awful maneuver set up by the Death Eaters." Fred rolled his eyes dramatically.

"But then why would he disappear afterwards?"

"To try and--" Fred started.

"Does this two-for-the-price-of-one sign apply for the U-No-Poo, as well?" someone asked from a few feet away.

"Yes! For goodness sakes, we're in the middle of a very important conversation, here." Fred turned back to his sister and continued more calmly, although his face had flushed to a shocking shade of pink. "To try and trick us. He knew that if he disappeared it would make him look all innocent, and then he'd come back and go to jail--I mean what kind of git comes back knowing perfectly well he's going to be put in Azkaban?" Fred ranted.

Ginny shrugged. She knew that was something Harry, Ron, or Hermione would've done. Maybe Fred and George wouldn't do something noble like that, but she knew that the other three would. This didn't mean she was feeling any sort of sympathy for Draco Malfoy, however. She was just completely baffled by his actions. This was far beyond any of the bizarre stuff he had ever done at Hogwarts.

Hermione and Ron still--with five children and a sixth on its way--still lived in a cramped London flat, because they had yet to earn enough money to buy a nice house out in the rolling fields of England. Hermione kept on insisting that she stop having children and go back into Ministry work, but at this point, she'd already gotten herself into the mess, as Ron put it, and who was going to take care of the kids if she started leaving for work everyday? It wasn't as though they had enough money for day care or a babysitter or anything that fancy. But it really wasn't as depressing as it sounded--the two of them were still very young and had only been married for seven years, so it rather made sense that they didn't have enough money yet. And it didn't help that all these kids were slowing down the process.

One afternoon, Hermione was walking down the street on her way to the grocery store (yes, witches and wizards do go to the grocery store. They're not going to magically conujure up a salad out of nowhere) with Benjamin, Victoria, Ewan, and baby Angus--Edith was at Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work day with Ron at the Ministry. He said that he could only handle one crazy child, so poor Victoria had to stay with her brothers and mother. Benjamin, who was five, was walking a few paces ahead of them, while Victoria (she was three) bobbed along sadly, clutching her mother's hand as though it was her only key to survival. Two-year-old Ewan, meanwhile, was in the stroller, and Angus (he was barely one) was in one of those confusing wrap-pouch things around Hermione's torso. She was very hot, stressed out, and tired.

They reached a streetcorner and Hermione did a routine check to make sure all her kids were there and intact. Angus in the pouch--check. Victoria squeezing the life out of her hand--check. Ewan in the stroller--check. Ben prancing along in front of them--ch--wait a minute. Hermione spun around. She hadn't even noticed that they had passed a football field outside a schoolyard and Ben had stayed with his face pressed up against the fence, his little fingers curled around the metal wiring.

She wheeled the whole group around. "Come on Ben, honey."

He didn't budge.

"Ben. Ben, come on, Mummy wants to get to the grocery store."

"What are they doing?" he asked.

"They're playing football." Hermione reached for Ben's arm while still holding on to Victoria, and while gripping the stroller in the other. She poked at his baby-fat bicep with her pointer finger. "Come on, Ben."

He turned to her with big, sad eyes. "Can't I watch?"

Hermione shook her head. "Not right now, sweetie. I'll ask Daddy to take you back some other time, okay?"

Ben frowned at her and turned back to the game.

"For goodness sake--Ben, come on. I'm not about to leave you here because I know that's what you want. We need to get to the grocery store." Hermione took a chance and let go of Victoria's hand. Surprisingly, the little girl obliged. She tugged a little harder on Ben's arm in an attempt to get him off the fence. "Ben, do not make Mummy angry. She's had a long day and it's not about to be over anytime soon."

He finally reluctantly removed his tightly grasping fingers from the fence and trudged along behind the group. Hermione was about to faint from exhaustion.

"Good night, Iris." Draco bent over and gave his daughter a kiss on the forehead. He readjusted the blankets on his five-year-old's bed, making sure that she was completely stuck in there. It was the overprotective father in him.

"Night, Daddy," she said cheerfully.

He stood up to leave, but his daughter stopped him.

"What's that thing on your arm?" she asked, staring at his left forearm.

Draco felt a sickening feeling rising in his stomach. He had trained his eyes not to look there, even when he was wearing a longsleeved shirt, as he usually made a point of doing. His daughter had caught him off guard. He sat down on the edge of her bed and lightly stroked her hair. "Well, when I was younger and much... less intelligent, I did something silly. And this is what happened." She was referring to the acid stain he had where the Dark Mark used to be tatooed. When he was stuck in Azkaban, the Dementors were instructed to very painfully remove all Dark Marks from the inmates.

Iris looked confused.

"Don't worry about it. Good night." He kissed her forehead once more. She left a wet one on his cheek. Draco then crossed the hall to his bedroom.

"What's wrong?" Pansy asked unemotionally from her spot on the bed.

"Iris just asked me about my arm."

"You mean, where your Dark Mark used to be?" she asked.

Draco lowered his eyes. "Yes."

"Well... what did you tell her?" Oddly enough, it didn't really sound like she cared much.

"I told her that I made a mistake and this is what happened."

"I guess it's a nice right and wrong kind of lesson."

Draco didn't respond.

"So what did you have to tell me that was so important it had to wait until now?"

An uncontrollable smile began to slowly creep across Draco's face, despite the previous conversation. "I got the job."

Pansy looked pleasantly pleased. "The Ministry one?"

Draco nodded, climbing into bed next to his wife.

"Finally," she said, contradicting the excited grin that had spread across her face.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You've just been looking for a while." Pansy kissed him.