Taming

Sixteen Years Later

“Daddy, I’m scared! What if no one likes me?” Eliza fretted.

Albus knelt down next to their eleven-year-old daughter. “Punkin’, everyone is going to love you. How could they not?”

Scorpius smiled. Eliza was Albus’s pet, although he’d never admit it. She was the only one of their children who had inherited his dark hair and gentle nature, and Scorpius sometimes wondered if Albus thought of her as more “his.” Though he loved all of their children to death, of course.

Scorpius let Albus comfort Eliza while he surveyed his brood. Margot sat, perched on her trunk, deliberately folded into the most alluring pose that she could manage. Her long legs were bare under her short skirt, and crossed at the knee demurely. However, she was leaning back on her hands, deliberately bringing her chest into prominence and highlighting her shimmering curtain of strawberry blonde hair.

He shook his head. And he thought he’d been vain at her age. Margot redefined the word. Granted, she was the exceptionally pretty product of exceptionally pretty people, but she was far too aware of it. Scorpius caught Lily’s eye and nodded at Margot.

Lily rolled her eyes and Scorpius chuckled. “Have you seen Rosie yet?” he asked Lily.

“Nope.”

“Well she and Alan are supposed to take the little monkey for the afternoon. She’s going to be inconsolable once Eliza leaves. So is Albus, of course, so we’re splitting them up,” Scorpius joked. “And speaking of monkeys,” he said, seeing Andrew bearing down on him, carrying eight-year-old Caroline.

“I found this,” Andrew sniffed, “Trying to stow away on the train.”

“Caroline Rose!” Scorpius scolded, taking her away from her exasperated brother.

“I want to go with Liza,” Caroline complained, her lip quivering.

“I know you do, Monkey, but it’s not time yet.”

“When is it my turn?” she asked in a small voice.

Lily reached for her. “Let me tell you about how I felt when your Daddy and Uncle Jamie got to go to Hogwarts and I had to stay behind,” she offered.

“Thanks,” Scorpius said gratefully. He clapped Andrew on the back. “Got your trunk taken care of already, son?”

“Yes Father. A prefect has to set a good example,” Andrew said with a grin.

Scorpius laughed and ruffled his son’s blonde curls. He was reminded often of the warning he’d given himself over twenty years ago – not to ever have a teenage son, since he and his own father had been abominable at that age.

However, in his own family, Margot was the one he fretted over; the one that he saw his teenage self in. Andrew was bright, easygoing, studious, and polite. All of his and Rose’s best characteristics. He was about to begin his fifth year at Hogwarts, and Scorpius didn’t doubt that even with his new prefect duties, Andrew would excel on his O.W.L.s. Margot had her N.E.W.T.s this year, and he was much less confident about her performance.

Margot’s main course of study at Hogwarts was boyfriend acquisition.

“You’ll look after Eliza, won’t you?” Scorpius asked Andrew, glancing at his daughter’s pale little face.

“Oh, she’s just a worrier. Like Dad.” He grinned. “But yes, I’ll look after her.”

“She’ll do just fine once she gets settled, I’m sure.” Scorpius said, more to reassure himself.

“Mummy!” Scorpius heard Caroline’s voice, and he turned around to see Rose coming towards them.

“Your mum’s here,” he told Andrew. “Finally. Come say goodbye to her and Aunt Lily.” But Andrew was already running to greet Rose.

She caught him in a hug, and then took Caroline from Lily’s arms. Lily pecked Andrew on the cheek. “I’m going to go check on my daughter,” Lily told Scorpius.

“Which one?”

“The one that needs checking on,” she joked.

At that moment, a tall, good-looking boy arrived on the platform, and Margot leapt up from her trunk, squealing loudly, and launched herself at him. He caught her and began to snog her enthusiastically.

Scorpius looked at Lily. “Want to reevaluate which of your daughters needs checking on?”

“No way! Those are your genes at work there, not mine,” Lily teased him, moving towards Eliza and Albus. “And that daughter of yours needs more than checking on. She needs a chastity belt.”

Rose laughed and Andrew shook his head, pointedly looking away from Margot. Albus wandered over to them, looking weepy already.
Scorpius hugged him tightly. “She’s going to be just fine,” he told Albus softly.

“I know.”

“You worry too much, Dad,” Andrew said with a smile.

“So your father tells me,” Albus said, ruefully.

“We’re all going to be fine. Well, maybe not Margot. But the rest of us,” Andrew joked. “Now can I get on the train? I don’t want to miss the start of the prefects’ meeting,” he said importantly.

“Of course,” Albus said. He’d been exceptionally pleased that Andrew was chosen as a prefect. He squeezed Andrew in a tight hug, kissing his blonde curls.

“Dad!” Andrew protested, squirming away. “Too much.”

Scorpius laughed and took Caroline so that Rose could hug Andrew. “Bye Mum!”

“Bye, Darling. We’re all so proud of you,” she told him, smiling broadly.

“We are,” Scorpius said, handing Caroline off to Albus, and catching Andrew in a more manly one-armed squeeze. “Very proud.”

“I’ll write you letters. You, too, Caroline,” he promised his littlest sister. She smiled at him, although she still looked on the verge of a temper tantrum. He waved to Lily and then climbed on the train, heading straight for the prefects’ carriage, no doubt.

Margot breezed over and kissed her fathers and her aunt, neglecting to introduce them to the boy that she’d been snogging.
Scorpius just rolled his eyes. The boy in question was dragging Margot’s trunk onto the train for her at the moment.

“Margot, try to stay out of trouble,” Scorpius sighed.

“Like you did, Father?” she asked, quirking her eyebrow in an uncanny imitation of himself.

“Don’t push it, Minx. Just don’t show up pregnant.”

“I’ll do my best,” she promised cheekily, sauntering off to join her friends on the train.

“It’s uncanny, isn’t it?” Rose said to Albus, and they both grinned. Scorpius shot them dirty looks.

Lily walked Eliza over to them. Scorpius squeezed his daughter tightly. “You’re going to be fine, darling. If you need anything, ask Andrew. He’s a prefect now, and he’s honor-bound to help you, even though you’re his little sister,” he joked.

“Okay, Father. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Princess,” he returned, suddenly blinking back tears.

Rose hugged Eliza as well, offering words of encouragement. Albus took Caroline’s hand. “Let’s walk Liza to the train, shall we?”
Albus and Lily moved forward with the younger girls, leaving Scorpius and Rose to share a moment.

“Gets harder every time, doesn’t it?” Rose sighed.

“Only three more years and Caroline will be on that train. Can you believe it?”

“Can I believe it? At least you and Albus will be finished then. I’m still just getting started! Ruby’s only three now.”

“Not to mention this one,” Scorpius said, patting Rose’s abdomen which was swollen with her and her husband Alan’s second child. “And any more after that.”

“This is absolutely the last one!” Rose exclaimed.

“Not even if I wanted another one?” he joked.

“Alan would have something colorful to say about that, I’m sure.”

“He doesn’t like me much, does he?” Scorpius joked.

“Can you blame him? You take a perverse delight in trying to make him jealous.”

“Just because I love the mother of two of my children? That’s hardly unnatural,” he protested, wrapping his arms around her and giving her a kiss.

“Ahem,” came a voice from behind them.

Scorpius gave Rose one more quick kiss, just to be perverse, and then released her. “Oh, hello Alan. Didn’t see you standing there,” Scorpius said with a smile. It was his private assessment that Rose’s husband was a bit stuffy and entirely too jealous and deserved to be shaken up a bit every once in a while.

“That’s because you were kissing my wife at the time,” Alan said, slightly petulantly.

Rose patted her husband’s arm, shooting a dirty look at Scorpius. Lily and Albus brought Caroline back over then, which saved Scorpius from having to tease Alan further.

“Well, everyone,” Lily began. “I’m off. I’m meeting Phil for lunch.” Lily still hadn’t married, and seemed content to date when she wanted. Everyone kissed her, and she headed for the apparition point.

The train chose that moment to chug into life, beginning to move down the tracks. Caroline burst into tears, and Albus looked close to it himself. They waved to the train until it disappeared out of the station, and then Alan scooped Caroline up onto his shoulder. “Do you want to come over and play with Ruby?” he offered kindly. She nodded despite her tears.

“Thanks, love,” Scorpius said to Rose. “And thank you, Alan,” he said genuinely.

Alan gave him a tight smile, but shook his hand, and Albus’s as well. Rose kissed Scorpius and Albus and took her husband’s hand. Albus and Scorpius watched them walk away.

“Are you ready to go home, Baby?” Scorpius asked Albus gently.

Albus nodded sadly. “It just gets harder,” he said quietly.

“Yes, it does,” Scorpius agreed. “They’re getting so grown up.”

“Especially Margot,” Albus joked, despite his teary eyes.

“We need to marry her off, and quickly.”

“Maybe she’ll be like Lily and not want to settle down.”

“I doubt it. Of all our children, Margot’s like me. She may be untamed now, but she’ll fall in love. When she does, she’ll fall hard. And stay fallen.”

Albus beamed at him. “You’re saying I tamed you? Makes me sound like a zookeeper,” he laughed.

“No, you just made me fall in love with you. Now why don’t I take you home, and show you how thoroughly undomesticated I can be?”
Albus’s eyes darkened and even after all this time, it made Scorpius’s stomach flutter. “I think that’s the best idea you’ve ever had,” Albus told his husband.

“No, the best idea I ever had was marrying you,” Scorpius told him. “What I’m going to do to you in a few minutes? Merely my second-best idea.”