Falling Twice [Harmione]

I love you, I always have, I always will

Past
March 2005


"Hermione, how do you say this word?" Teddy ran up to Hermione's side and she leaned over to look at the book he was carrying. The three of them were in the library at Grimmauld. Hermione and Harry were working on their case, going over reports spread out between them while Teddy read books on magical creatures on a comfy sofa close by.

Her hand went to rest affectionately on Teddy's back as she scanned through the page quickly to find the word he meant. It was another magical creatures book, "Oh that's sphinx." Hermione enunciated the creature's name slowly. "Harry met one of those once."

"Wow! When? What did it say? Did it give you a riddle? Do they try to eat you? How did it—?"

Harry laughed at Teddy's rapid-fire questions and cut him off gently with a smile. "I'll answer everything but in about an hour okay? Hermione and I still need to finish this review—"

"Aww." Teddy sulked sticking out his bottom lip and his hair turning a darker blue in disappointment.

Hermione could see from Harry's expression he was already wavering on giving in so she spoke up quickly giving Teddy a quick hug. "An hour isn't that long at all besides don't you want to finish that section of the book so you know what questions to ask?"

"Alright." Teddy drew out in a long-suffering voice as he walked away.

Hermione looked at Harry and raised her eyebrows while he made a sheepish face. "We talked about not saying yes to everything he asks."

"But then he makes a sad face," Harry said in a quiet voice, dropping his eyes back to the paperwork.

Hermione reached out, sliding her hand around his wrist to stop Harry from shuffling paperwork. "Boundaries help children grow, remember that book we read about promoting self-esteem?"

"I know." Harry sighed looking back up at Hermione. "I just want him happy."

"He is happy. As long as you're there for him and love him, he's happy Harry. Even if you say no to him he knows you love him and that's the important thing." Hermione glanced behind herself to make sure Teddy was occupied and saw that in just the few minutes that had passed, Teddy had managed to curl up in a strange pretzel-like position on the sofa and fall asleep. "See? He's fine. We'll just finish our review and then maybe we wake him up and go take a lunch break at the park."

Hermione sighed looking down at the stacks of paperwork spread out between her and Harry. She'd managed to work out several plausible storage locations for the merchandise. With those locations, they'd managed to confiscate several large shipments of unusual weapons before they had gotten sent to Australia and Peru. Hermione sighed tapping the list of people they had arrested during the raids. "With the loss of their shipments and the workers they have to be out a significant amount of money. With the complexity of the charm work on the weapons they can't just use any random witch or wizard – they need skilled individuals. So that means they can't easily recoup their losses."

"So they're going to be desperate."

"Desperate enough to make mistakes, we haven't gotten anyone from the inner group but it's only a matter of time until we do."

"And once we do..."

"We've got them," Hermione smirked at him. "If we hadn't had the bad luck last time with Carstairs—"

"Merlin!" Harry exclaimed quietly looking at Teddy quickly to make sure he was still sleeping. "Of all the damn times to trip over his shoelaces"

"I thought Robards was going to have an aneurysm afterward when he chewed him out!" They both laughed quietly despite the frustration of their most promising raid getting cocked up.