Even though he hadn’t gotten to bed until the early hours of the morning, Rick was up with the dawn. As much as he would have liked to stay in bed, curled around Hermione’s soft body, somebody had gotten onto the Hogwarts grounds. Someone had specifically targeted Hermione, and that wasn’t going to stand. He finally had something good in his life that made both him and his kids happy. He had a life that was worth living. Rick would let nothing and no one threaten that.
“You can’t be serious?” Hermione threw her hands up into the air. Rick had just informed her that she wasn’t allowed to leave their rooms until they knew what was going on.
“Minerva doesn’t want to put you at risk,” Rick explained. Neither did he, but he was wise enough not to say it out loud. Hermione was the most independent woman that he had ever met. She didn’t need anyone to take care of her. Rick loved that about her, but it also made keeping her safe a real bitch sometimes. “She outranks me here, sweetheart.”
“I have classed to teach, and I have a meeting with Beth today to go over the primary school syllabus that she’s drawn up for next year.” Hermione was rattling off her to-do list as she sat on the sitting room floor, changing Judith’s diaper. “And if I’m going to be living here with you, I need to arrange with Dobby to have my things moved.”
“Classes have been canceled today, given what happened last night. Minerva’s keeping all students on lockdown in their dorms. Beth’s keeping an eye on our kids, so she ain’t gonna be making that meeting either.” ‘Our kids’ was a term that Daryl had come up with to refer to the orphaned muggleborn kids that their group had taken in. In one of his rare displays of emotion, Daryl had pointed out that children didn’t need to be reminded that their families were dead on a regular basis. So, instead of calling them ‘orphans,’ they called them ‘our kids.’ Given the emotional trauma in their pasts, the kids lived with their group full time in the Astronomy Tower while still keeping their house affiliations and access to their house common rooms. This gave them a sense of routine and family that had been missing after losing their families. Beth served as a bit of an unofficial dorm mother to these kids. “And you can floo-call Dobby to talk to him about having your things moved.” The strange little house-elf was always oddly excited to be of help.
Hermione helped Judith to sit up on her baby blanket so she could play with her toys and then got to her feet. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I bloody hate this.”
“I know, darlin’,” Rick gave her a sympathetic smile before walking over and giving her a soft kiss. “I’m sure this won’t last long.”
Hermione nodded and gave him a little half-smile. She let her arms drop from her chest. This allowed Rick the chance to pull her into his arms. “I love you, sweetheart.”
That earned him a full-blown grin. “I love you too.”
Rick gave her one final kiss before pulling away because he had to get going. “You gonna be good with Thing 1 and Thing 2 for today?” He jerked his head over to where Judith was having a babbled conversation with a stuffed niffler, and Carl was munching on a bag of candy that Fred had sent home with Rick the previous day.
“Of course,” Hermione waved her hand. “We’ll be fine. We always are.” It wasn’t unusual for work to keep Rick late, and Hermione had gotten into the habit of keeping Judith and Carl when that happened.
“Carl, you behave today, ya hear?” Rick got his son’s attention.
Carl laughed. “No class, and Hermione’s moving in? No problem. It’s a good day.” His voice sounded like he had just inhaled a balloon full of helium.
Hermione laughed when Rick shot her a questioning look. “Fred must have sent him some of the twins' new squeaky sours. His normal voice will come back in a few minutes,” she assured him.
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