Melody awoke well rested and ready to return home with Anna. Harry moved around her in the room gathering little things that had gathered for the child over the last day. As he dressed Anna in a little jumper, he looked over at his wife and smiled.
“Ready to be a mom?” he asked simply.
“We’ll see,” she replied, standing from her bed and putting her hair in a ponytail.
Harry tapped the pile of baby things with his wand and they were sent away to the house. He carried Anna over to Melody and wrapped a spare arm around her.
The little trio walked out of their room and slowly made their way to the hospital lobby. Melody was entranced by Anna’s smile as they stepped off the elevator and into the chaotic room. People shot from side to side in what Melody remembered as normal St. Mungo’s behavior.
When they stepped from behind an unpleasant indoor plant, they were swarmed by flashing bulbs and screeching questions.
Their shadows were back and this time they had nearly tripled in size as they completely surrounded the new family. Harry had lost his temper once with these prying fools, but that was an utter understatement to his reaction of their inquiry of his daughter.
With a forceful stab of his wand, all the reporters were thrown back at least three feet. Melody opened her mouth to say something, but Harry beat her.
“Stay back you low-lives,” he shouted into the face of a pale reporter trying to regain his footing, “Offer us the decency to take our daughter home in peace!”
He was about to direct his clan out of the hospital when a bold, yellow haired fool called out.
“It’s a girl, then?”
Harry immediately spun on his heels and shot the journalist with a stream of blue light that flattened him against the floor. The other reporters looked at the young man as he trembled on the marble.
“She is a girl that you have no right to bombard with your garbage and that will never find herself even remotely annoyed with any of you! Stay away from my daughter or you’ll all get the same thing,” he snapped before removing his family from the building.
They were out on the street in seconds, hailing a taxi.
After a night of occasional alarms, the parents woke to find little Anna sleeping peacefully in her crib. Melody was running her hand through the contents of her closet as Harry gazed upon the little bundle.
“I know why Ron fainted now. She’s beautiful,” he said, delicately brushed her head with his index finger.
Melody smiled as she slipped into a white summer dress. Harry left the room to start breakfast and in his absence Melody made her way to the crib and looked down at Anna for a long time.
She gathered the child in her arms and carried her down to the kitchen where Harry was placing some jam on his toast.
“Ah. My two girls at last join me,” he laughed.
Melody magically summoned a bottle and it levitated in the air above Anna. The three sat quietly enjoying the morning until there was a shout from the living room.
Harry was immediately on his feet and on the move to approach the frantic voice. Melody followed him at a good distance for a second, but he quickly demanded that she stay in the kitchen while he checked it out. Never one to sit it out, Melody paced the kitchen. She heard the murmurs of conversation from the living room, but respected Harry’s wishes and stayed still for Anna’s sake.
Harry returned to the kitchen with what appeared to be an invisible weight dragging down his shoulders. His face was grim, but Melody couldn’t wait another second to find out what had just happened.
“What was that?” she asked sharply, pulling Anna in closer to herself.
“I want you to take Anna to the Burrow. There you can stay with Molly and Bill.”
“Why?!” Melody objected.
“Malfoy…he’s back in the area. You will be safer there. You’re still weak from the birth.”
Harry had lost her at “Malfoy.” He was now summoning items from all over the house, mainly the hidden storeroom.
“What are you going to do?” Melody asked him after she regained her composure.
“I’m first going to the Ministry to meet with the other Aurors, and then we are going out to find him. With all of us focusing on this, it shouldn’t take long to pin him down.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Malfoy is here for one of two reasons: one, he is coming after me, in which case he will come to me; or two, he is coming after both of us, and then he will stick to the area. I’ll be home in time to tuck Anna in for bed.”
He moved in and kissed Melody on the head before doing the same for Anna.
“Please. Go to the Burrow,” he said softly before running off to save his little family.
Melody sat in shock for a moment, before summoning a bag of Anna’s things.
The morning was warm and the walk was short, but Melody opted to use Side-Along to get to the Burrow. She arrived in the yard and anxiously glanced around her. Hurrying up the door, she was met by Mrs. Weasley as she headed out of the house.
“Oh Melody, dear. You really shouldn’t have Anna out too much yet,” she said before placing a hand on Anna’s face.
“Come inside with me, Molly. Something very serious is going on.”
Molly immediately set down the basket she was carrying and placed her arm over Melody’s shoulder.
“Is Anna okay?” Molly asked as they stepped into the house.
“She’s fine, but she might be in danger.”
As Melody readjusted the infant in her arms, Bill made his way down the stairs. He saw the distress on Melody’s face and pulled a seat up beside her.
“What’s going on?” he asked placing a hand on her back.
“Harry was called off this morning because Malfoy has been seen in the area. Alone I couldn’t fight him off after having Anna, so he told me to come here.”
“Stay all you like,” Molly said sweetly, “later tonight, Bill will walk you home and stay with you until Harry returns.”
Bill nodded and the group settled in for a tense day in a usually comforting home.
Night has long fallen and Harry had failed to return home before Anna was put to bed. Bill was upstairs in a guest bedroom while Melody sat with Anna in the living room.
Hours passed as Melody constantly scanned the windows surrounding her. Any small noise, she overreacted to and leapt up from her seat to run to them. Never was there anything suspicious on the other side.
As night grew older and older, Melody found her eyes drooping. She had finally calmed enough to sleep when a hiss in the air woke her around four in the morning. Slowly, she opened her eyes to see a shadow hovering over her with her daughter in its arms.
In a second her wand was out and pointed at the hidden face. With a brash movement, Harry removed his hood and pulled Melody’s wand from her hand. As she recognized him, Melody jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around her family before gathering Anna from Harry’s arms and cuddling the child in her own.
“Thank goodness you’re back, Harry. What happened?” she asked as he guided her to the couch, where he sat down beside her.
Solemnly, Harry ran a finger through the light fuzz on Anna’s head.
“It’s worse than we thought. That rat isn’t just running around, hiding. He is about trying to make the old Death Eaters join him in avenging Voldemort’s death. Looks like I’m the target again.”
“Not again,” Melody sighed, placing her head on Harry’s shoulder.
They sat in silence for a moment while Melody recounted that fateful night in her head. She remembered vividly the hatred in Draco’s eyes as he stood over Dumbledore’s dead body.
“What scares me,” Harry began, “is that you were there with me and with both of us under the gun, it can’t mean anything good.”
Melody paused for a moment and followed Harry’s eyes to Anna, sleeping in her arms.
“They’ll come straight for Anna.”
Harry nodded with a great look of burden on his face.
“That was my first thought too. We need to come up with a way to protect her until this revolt is resolved.”
The silence that followed was filled with a collage of various images and ideas, none of which seemed to make a lot of sense to Melody.
“Have you thought of any ideas?” she asked.
“First and most certainly, I need to focus my efforts on finding Malfoy before he finds us. It will mean being away more, but it’ll be better in the long run.”
Melody wasn’t about to be selfish of his time when it came to Anna.
“If it means saving our daughter’s life, you have no choice.”
Again, Harry nodded.
“Exactly. She’ll also need to be watched constantly, so for the rest of the summer, she can’t leave your sight.
“Absolutely,” Melody asserted before coming across the same question that Harry had.
What would happen when term started again?
“But I run out of ideas when term starts and you have to start teaching again,” he reflected.
Melody thought for a second, but was certain what she would need to do.
“Anna comes first. I won’t return to teaching until Malfoy is caught.”
Harry shook his head.
“I don’t think that would be wise. First of all, it may be a long time before that happens. Second, it might be very crucial that we have a witch of your caliber at the school to protect the students if Malfoy takes an even more pitiful approach. Isn’t there some one we can trust to watch her during the day?”
Melody ran through the people they knew in her mind.
“Molly would be happy to take her,” she suggested.
Again, Harry’s head shook.
“Molly isn’t as young as she once was. She wouldn’t be able to fight off Malfoy.”
Melody agreed before falling on the obvious choice.
“Bill.”
Harry was not as clear on the simplicity of this.
“What about him? We can’t expect him to quit at Gringott’s to babysit our kid while you’re at work.”
“No, he is working from a home base right now,” Melody began to reason, “He has been staying at the Burrow, but he could do just as well, if not better, here. We have to at least give him a chance.”
Harry was quiet for a moment as he thought this new information out in his mind. After the long pause, he nodded and promised to see him with her the next morning before he headed out.
They placed Anna in her room with a strong force field around her that would alert them to unwelcome hands. Together they stood in the doorway gazing upon their child. A tear escaped Melody before she buried herself in Harry’s chest.