It was 10:30 in the morning on September 1st, 2017. The walkways of platform 9 ¾ in King’s Crossing station was packed with parents, children, trunks and animal cages. The air was filled with final warnings and goodbyes and the screechings of owls and meows of cats. But one family in particular was having an especially loud time of it.
“Daddy, I don’t want to go!” The reluctant child, a platinum blonde little girl with pale blue eyes was clinging to the waist of a very recognizable wizard. The black haired man knelt down next to the girl and took hold of her shoulders to look her in the eye. Harry Potter smiled at his daughter, well aware of the source of her anxiety.
“Don’t worry Eden, Papa and I will be able to take care of the little ones without you. You are such a big girl now and you need to go to Hogwarts so you can learn how to be a proper young witch. Don’t you want to learn how to use your new wand?”
The little girl bit her lip and shook her head. “No!” she cried, throwing her arms around her father’s neck. “I want to say home with you and Papa and Mordred and Niamh and Casey! Don’t make me go!”
“What’s this? What happened to the excited little girl who was bouncing off the walls this morning?” A tall red headed man came upon them, leading a little boy and girl while keeping a hold of a tow-headed toddler. Eden’s tears began anew when she caught sight of him.
“I don’t want to go to Hogwarts, Papa!” she cried, still clinging to Harry’s neck. The brunette shared a look with his spouse, asking what he should do. Bill Weasley, ever the peacemaker and quite distressed himself to see his daughter in such a state, quickly set down three-year-old Casey and pried Eden off Harry’s neck.
“Why ever not, Pet? What’s wrong?” He crouched down next to Harry, who was greeting the other two kids enthusiastically. Little Mordred and Niamh were thrilled to see their Daddy in the middle of the day and immediately started to tell him about getting ready to come to the train station, with Casey, the baby of the family, putting his two cents about getting to see the train. He kept an eye on Eden and Bill, ready to step in if needed.
“Hugo…Hugo said I-I’m going to be put in Slytherin and then PawPaw won’t like me anymore!”
Once again, Bill exchanged a look with his husband. Fifteen year old Hugo Weasley, Hermione and Ron’s oldest son, was the biggest trouble maker of the family and had been known to pull more than a few pranks on the younger Weasley cousins. Bill hugged Eden to him as he murmured words of encouragement to her.
The first time Bill had seen Eden as a newborn in the arms of her mother he had thought she was a changeling child. He and Harry had fallen in love with the baby from the first moment they saw her. Luna Lovegood had come to Harry and asked him to consider giving her a home. The father didn't want anything to do with her and Luna had felt that a nomadic life was no way to raise a child. She had asked Harry to care for the baby and love her as his own. And the men had been happy to do so.
Harry and Bill had been beside themselves for the first few months of caring for Eden. Harry had taken over raising Teddy from his grandmother when the little boy was four and Bill had been at Hogwarts when his youngest sibling was born, so neither of them really knew how to care for a baby. Hermione and Ginny had taken pity on them and showed them as much as they could, but more often than not, Molly and Arthur were awoken by the frantic fathers, convinced Eden was in trouble. At which point Molly would make then a cup of tea and examine the little girl before giving her a clean bill of health and bundling the three of them back to bed.
Despite her overprotective fathers’ worries, Eden was a perfectly healthy baby, happy and bubbly for the most part. As she grew up it turned out that like Harry, her eyesight was weak but magic helped her deal with little things like that. Harry often joked that Eden was really his daughter, since she had refused to take an eyesight potion and continued to wear glasses and when left alone, her ghostly locks were a riot of curls. She was very smart and creative, forever having her nose in a book. She adored her big brother and younger siblings, always willing to lend a hand to her fathers when needed.
The three younger Potters were orphans before Harry and Bill blood-adopted them, as they had Teddy and Eden. Mordred's father had murdered his wife before killing himself; Harry had worked the case and had been the one to discover the three-year-old hiding under his bed. Mordred had attached himself to the Auror and after a brief battle of wills with his superiors Harry had taken the little boy home until a foster home could be found for him. Once Bill and Eden saw him however, there was no chance Mordred was ever leaving the Potter house.
Niamh and Casey were a sister and brother who were dropped off at the orphanage where Ginny Malfoy volunteered three days a week, when Casey was a newborn. Ginny, knowing Harry and Bill were talking about adopting another child, had brought her eldest brother to work with her. Little carrot-haired Niamh had crawled into the Bill's lap and demanded a story. A week later, the siblings had been firmly installed in the Potter home.
Bill and Harry had devoted their lives to their children. As a writer, Bill stayed home and took care of the kids while Harry was at work. When Mordred had joined their family Harry had finally taken Kingsley’s offer and taken the position of Head Auror, allowing him to have more of a desk job rather than being out in the field. He had taken Eden to work with him that morning so they could have some time together before meeting Bill and the rest of the Potter-Weasley clan at Kings Crossing. Ron had taken Rose and Hugo with him to work as well and now that Harry took a moment to think about it, Eden had been reluctant to leave the office after her older cousins dropped by.
“Now listen to me, Pet,” Bill said softly, looking into Eden’s eyes as he spoke. “Your Cousin Hugo was joking with you and he shouldn’t have said those things. Your grandfather will always love you; it doesn’t matter if you were a Gryffindor or a Slytherin. And your Daddy and I will always love you too. Now, when you get on the train, I’m going to go talk to Aunt Hermione and just you see if Hugo doesn’t get a Howler tomorrow morning.” Eden cracked a small smile at that. Everyone in the extended Weasley family had heard Hermione Weasley when she was angry and all the cousins agreed it was just as bad to get Aunt Hermione mad at you as it was to provoke Nana’s wrath.
“You promise?” she demanded, her pale eyes wide. Bill and Harry nodded, sharing a smile.
“You’ve seen Auntie Hermione mad, what do you think?” Harry replied, laughing. Eden’s smile widened and she placed a quick kiss on both their cheeks before turning to say goodbye to her siblings. Mordred and Niamh gladly gave her hugs and kisses, Mordred proclaiming all the while that she had to write as often as possible, because he was going to Hogwarts in three years and he wanted to know everything. Casey was going through a difficult stage and refused to let her kiss him goodbye, though he grudgingly allowed her to hug him. She was turning to her parents for one last goodbye when a thatch of aqua blue hair caught her eye.
“Teddy!” she squealed, darting through the crowd to tackled her brother. Teddy Lupin laughed and caught her, hugging her tightly in lieu of swinging her around, stuck as they were in the crowd of people on the platform. Quickly they were surrounded by the other kids, each eager to greet their oldest brother. Teddy, having graduated Hogwarts two years before, had moved out and was quite busy in his second year of the Auror Academy. He came over for dinner as often as possible, but it never seemed to be enough for his family.
“Hey, Panda!” he said cheerfully, pressing a kiss to her forehead as he untangled himself from Niamh, who was demanding to know why he hadn’t been at dinner the night before like he had promised he would be. “Hey guys, one at a time, my head is still ringing. I got knocked a good one by my partner yesterday.”
“What are you doing here?” Eden asked as she waved to Bill and Harry, who were slowly making their way to their kids. “I thought you said you were going to say goodbye last night.”
“Well, since I couldn’t make it, I thought I would take some personal time and see you off. Couldn’t let my little sister go to off to Hogwarts without saying goodbye, now could I?” He grinned at his sister. “Did you manage to talk Dad into getting you that snake?”
“No,” Eden replied, laughing. “But I did get an owl! So I can write you a letter every day!”
“You had better,” he laughed. “Hey look, it’s almost 11; you need to get on board. Come on, I’ll help you get your trunk on the train.”
In the mad rush to get final belongings onto the train, final hugs and kisses were exchanged as well as demands from parents and children to write as often as possible. Tears were seen on many a mother’s, and father’s, eyes, and warnings to behave were issued. Eden doled out a last round of hugs and kisses, managing to plant one on Casey’s cheek before the little boy could stop her, and, with the help of her daddy, climbed onto the train, ready to start her first year at Hogwarts.
Bill and Harry stood side-by-side, quietly holding hands as the Hogwarts Express slowly pulled away from the station. Mordred, Niamh, Casey and Teddy ran along side of the train as far as the platform would let them, laughing as they waved to Eden, who had joined her cousins in a compartment.
“So, two down, three more to go,” Harry said quietly as the red train disappeared from view. Bill smiled and leaned down to plant a kiss on his husband’s lips.
“You ready to herd them home?”
“We’ll have to round them up first,” Harry laughed. They started walking towards the end of the platform, where their kids had been joined by Hermione, Ron, Charlie, Ginny, Draco, Percy and their underage offspring who had come to say goodbye to siblings. “Oh look, seems like that’s already taken care off. If we sneak off now, bet we can have a decent snog before they find us.”
Bill laughed and started walking towards their family. “Why don’t we just bribe Teddy to watch the little ones so we can have an evening to ourselves like we usually do?”
Harry’s grin was infectious as he playfully leered at his partner. “I like how you think, darling.”
The greetings from the family were loud as they joined the crowd and soon the pair was swallowed by the various conversations. But as Harry was engulfed into the chatter and laughter, his mind wandered to thoughts of his family. He was proud of each of his children, and he prayed all of them would grow up to be as happy as he was. As he looked from blue-haired Teddy to brunette Mordred and redheaded Niamh and Casey and on to his handsome husband, he counted himself quite lucky. In 26 years, he had grown from a broken boy with nothing to a wizard who had a loving family and an adoring husband. Yes, he was quite lucky indeed.