Author's Notes: This was originally an oneshot I wrote for the Harry/Draco Mpreg fest, Betaed by Edelau. There seemed to be some confusion about the ending, with many reviewers feeling that there wasn't one. The ending has always been there, but the issue is that it isn't quite at the end of the story. I couldn't leave the story there and wrote past the ending. So to avoid any further confusion, I am breaking this story up into chapter 1, the proper oneshot, ending with the ending of this story, and chapter 2, the epilogue part that I couldn't help but adding. If you have already read this story, there is no new material here, just a teeny amount of restructuring.
Harry's POV:
In the days after the war, there was such a demand for public resources that wizards found themselves turning to public services provided by the Muggles. St. Mungo's and the other Wizarding hospitals were completely filled with life threatening cases, so all but the most serious of injuries were turned away. Witches and wizards thus turned to Muggle hospitals, allowing the Muggles to use their strange 'sutures' to 'sew up' their wounds. With many houses destroyed, witches and wizards found themselves seeking out Muggle homeless shelters. And with so many Wizarding fields and crops destroyed or damaged, witches and wizards turned to Muggle handouts.
The government of the United Kingdom, ran by the Muggles, had a rather socialist leaning, and thus provided all sorts of handouts to its citizens, including food, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment. In the days after the war, many magical people took advantage of this fact and the Muggles were too blind to realize they were being taken advantage of. Since witches and wizards do not pay taxes or support the Muggle system in any way, they are considered leeches on the system. The Ministry of Magic thus tasked their office of Magical Law Enforcement to route the abusers out and get them appropriate magical aid, if necessary.
The Death Eaters were the Ministry's top concern at first. All available personnel were moved into tasks relating to the capture and detainment of dangerous dark wizards. When citizens volunteered to join up, they were encouraged first to join the much depleted Auror division. There were just no resources available for tracking down Muggle leeches and no magical resources to give them if found.
It wasn't until months after the war that Magical Law Enforcement Officers were finally available to deal with the problem. By then, many witches and wizards had infiltrated the Muggle system so deeply that it was hard to spot them. Thus over a year later, we were still getting reports of strange occurrences in the Muggle world. The newly trained Aurors, such as Ron and I, were often given the assignment to investigate as easy training cases, to prove that we could handle real investigative work on our own without a senior Auror looking over our shoulder.
Ron and I had already proved our medal a thousand fold and weren't normally given such simple cases anymore. We were handling more serious disputes with reported violence on a regular basis. But this particular day we were working the night shift and everyone else was out on other cases when the call came in. These leech cases weren't typically considered top priority and would normally wait until morning when someone less important came in, but this one was marked high priority, so we went out to investigate.
The reason the case was marked high priority had to do with the fact that it involved a wizard who had given birth in the Muggle world. While wizards have some difficultly becoming pregnant, it is a practical impossibility for male Muggles. If it got out, it would be major news in the Muggle world. Thus it was standard knowledge that pregnant wizards were to stay out of notice of all Muggles, punishable with a maximum sentence of a large fine and a year in Azkaban. The maximum sentence was only imposed on repeat offenders who had knowingly and willingly caused a major security breech. If it was an accident or an unavoidable occurrence, the Ministry would clean up the problem with no punishment to the first time offender.
According to the reports, this particular wizard had first received medical treatment from the Muggles under the name Dre Smith shortly after the war and stayed in a shelter. He was later moved into a halfway house and put on public subsidy to pay for his clothing and pocket money, while his food and board were covered flat out. He had also received regular mental health treatment related to an alleged mental trauma.
It was typical shite until one month ago when Dre was taken to hospital and the pregnancy was discovered. He was already eight months along. Due to the unusual nature of the sex organs, he was kept in hospital until he delivered. The halfway house was for blokes and now that it was realized that he wasn't entirely male, he was being moved to a home for pregnant women and new mothers. The unusual change recorded in the Muggle paperwork was what alerted the Ministry that night to the issue.
"Smith, huh? Do you think this bloke's related to Zacharias Smith?" Ron asked as we made our way towards the Muggle shelter in question in an exclusively Muggle region of Surrey.
After changing out of our Auror robes and into our designated Auror Muggle clothes, we'd first had to apparate to the nearest apparition checkpoint, which was an old disused Muggle telephone booth a block away. Now we were walking the remainder of the distance, Ron turned around and walking backwards in order to talk to me.
I shrugged. "Maybe, I guess."
"What if it is Zacharias?" Ron asked, face lighting up with amusement.
"Well come on then, let's go find out," I said, bypassing Ron, since I was walking in the correct direction and therefore going at the greater speed.
Ron spun around and jogged after me, catching up quickly. "Wonder what the Muggles thought of having to perform a Cesarean on a bloke," Ron said with a suggestive waggle of his brows.
Of course with a male birth, a Cesarean section was a necessity to get the baby out. There were a number of magical methods invented that vastly improved upon the Muggle technique, which was why it was so rare that a wizard would consent to the Muggle method unless it was an absolute emergency. Even during the mayhem after the war, male wizards in labor were still supposed to be admitted with top priority at magical hospitals, although a few men hadn't known that and had gone to the Muggles for help. Those cases had since been cleaned up and the necessary Muggles obliviated.
"You know Ron, if he's been in Muggle care since the war, it's possible he has amnesia. We could be dealing with someone who doesn't know they are a wizard," I said. "He might've been just as surprised as the Muggles that he turned up preggers."
"Possibly," Ron conceded. "Hey look, they're Muggles hanging out of that window looking at us. Suppose we've messed up Muggle dress?"
We were around the corner from our destination and in a Muggle-dense region, so it wasn't unusual for there to be Muggles around. My Muggle dress was impeccable when it came to slumming it, but less accurate when it came to business or formal wear. We were wearing business slacks and polo shirts, so I knew mine was fine. But Ron had occasionally made Muggle fashion mistakes in the past, so I gave him a once over as we walked. "You look fine. Probably just nosey. We're close now; we should keep quiet in case they overhear," I said and Ron gave a curt nod of agreement.
We were soon at the entrance to the shelter and took the lift up to the desired floor. There we asked to see Dre Smith. We were shown into a waiting room in the front of the compound while our fake IDs were examined and verified to be real. We explained that we knew Dre from school, since the age on the Muggle paperwork indicated that Dre was the same age as us. We just wanted to see how 'she' was and possibly extend our help, now that we were aware that 'she' was in need. How we knew 'she' was here was glossed over with a quick spell.
"Andrea has undergone quite a shock," a pudgy middle aged Muggle woman explained to us once she bought our story. "Her parents were murdered in front of her a little over a year ago and she received a head wound in the attack. She entered the system as Dre Smith and it was thought she was a man, because of her straight, slender build. It seems unfathomable that they missed it, but apparently no one bothered to check. She does have rather boyish mannerisms; we figured she's one of those newfangled transgender lesbians. But how a lesbian turned up pregnant is a bit of a mystery. Tell me, gentlemen, what was she like in school?"
"Went by the name of Dre, tried to act like a bloke, but a good person," Ron said with a shrug, repeating back the information we'd already been given. It always helped to speak highly of allegedly old friends.
"I was never sure she really was a girl, she acted so much like us. It was only that she was in the girl's dorm and used the girl's loo that gave her away. Just out of curiosity, are you sure she's not, you know, at all like us?" I asked, trying to tease out how much this Muggle knew. From what she'd said so far, it was possible she didn't need to be obliviated. Likely some Muggle up the chain had initiated the lie and covered up the abnormality, reducing the impact.
"Oh I didn't look myself, but the doctors said she's all female on the inside. Not entirely right on the outside, I heard; maybe that's why she was able to cover so well. She certainly is flat chested and unable to breastfeed that babe of hers," the Muggle replied.
"She always was flat up top," Ron confirmed as if he knew this Dre. That was an Auror trick to make people tell more: parrot back what the witness says, to make them think you already knew.
"Well when can we see her?" I asked.
"I'll call her up right now. It may take her a moment or two, she has the baby and all."
Ron glanced at the nameplate on the desk the Muggle had come from and said, "Thanks Mrs. Harper."
I added my thanks and the two of us remained sitting in the lounge, while Mrs. Harper went back to her desk and picked up a telephone. Ron raised an eyebrow at me and I raised one at him back. We did our best not to crack up in amusement as we silently failed at communication. I wanted to ask him if he agreed with me that Mrs. Harper didn't know enough to be obliviated, but of course I couldn't with her still in the room and I wasn't able to communicate it with silent head gestures.
Ron shook his head in a way that indicated that he had no idea what I was trying to say. It was at that moment I first saw a glimpse of blond hair through the window. The compound was set up like a motel with a long hallway leading to a series of locked rooms beyond the lounge. The doors separated the lounge from the hallway were paned with a series of small windows, through which the blond figure of Draco Malfoy pushing a pram was clearly visible walking towards us. He looked odd, dressed in slim fitting Muggle jeans and a hoodie, instead of his usual Wizarding robes.
I nodded in the direction of the door and Ron turned instantly to look as well. Both of our jaws dropped as we realized who Dre was. Ron recovered first and jumped up just before Draco reached the door. He opened the door for Draco with a greeting of, "Hey Dre; good to see you again. Haven't seen you since school," letting Draco know the story we were using without explicitly telling Draco.
At that point, I was still rather flabbergasted, taking in the sight of the blond haired pointy baby in the pram. I guessed her a girl, because she was wrapped in a flower covered purple blanket and matching purple flower cap. She was pink and had the squashed wrinkly face of a newborn, but several of Draco's most distinctive features were evident on the serene face. She twitched as the pram crossed over the lip of the doorjamb, her little arms crossing over her face before falling back to rest on either side of the little head. She appeared to be sleeping.
"Weasley, Potter, what are you doing here?" Draco asked in his slow drawl, stopping with the pram just this side of the door. He looked like he was considering turning back the way he'd come and running from us, but he didn't. He just stood there, his tension clearly visible in the way he held his body so stiff and slightly jittery.
"We just heard you were here and wanted to know if we could help. Whose baby is that?" I asked, my curiosity getting the best of me. It was one of the things that would be required for our report, but was not on the list of initial questions we needed to ask.
"Smith's. Oldest trick in the book; the bloody wanker said he'd marry me and then took off once I was up the duff," Draco replied, his head held high.
"Zacharias Smith?" Ron asked, a hint of glee in his eye.
"No, Zekiel Smith, his older brother."
"So you took his last name anyway?" I asked, motioning for him to enter fully and take a seat. He did, pulling the pram along with him and Ron cast a discrete muffling charm towards the Muggle; not a full blown one that was easily noticed, but a lesser one that made it hard to distinguish individual words.
"I took it when my parents were murdered. Zeke and I were together. I thought he'd come get me and that by taking it, I'd be easier for him to find. Or I thought you lot would pick me up, but you never came and he came months later than he should have."
"Then what happened? Once Smith came for you, why did you stay?" Ron asked.
"It was only one weekend and then he was gone. He was a Death Eater too. He was worried your lot would lock him up, so he fled. He left me here and I have no idea where he went, except that I'm pretty sure he left the country."
"Harry, do we have a Zeke Smith on our list of missing Death Eaters?" Ron asked me.
"No, none of the Smiths got their hands dirty, as far as I'm aware," I replied.
"Zeke did. I saw him. He's such a fucking twat that I'll testify against him if you want," Draco offered.
"Great! We really appreciate it mate," Ron said, always happy to have a new lead on the bad guys.
"What are you going to do for me and Ceres?" Draco asked.
"What do you need us to do?" I asked. At this point, it still wasn't clear why Draco hadn't simply returned home.
"I need protection from the other Death Eaters! They murdered my parents and tried to kill me!" Draco practically screamed.
"Boys, if there's a problem, you'll have to leave," Mrs. Harper said, making her continued presence seated at her desk apparent.
I clutched my wand up my sleeve and cast a nonverbal finite, to cancel the earlier muffling charm.
"No, there's no problem. Dre was just telling us about his parents' murder; it's a very upsetting subject," Ron said quickly, accidentally flubbing the supposed gender.
"Look Dre," I stressed the fake name, "most of the murderers have been captured and I promise to protect you and little, er?"
"Ceres," Draco supplied.
"Right, Ceres, from the rest," I said.
"Where will you take us?" Draco asked.
"Malfoy Manor isn't safe enough?" Ron asked, just to make sure.
"Certainly not. That's where they captured us from," Draco said.
Ron looked over his shoulder, verified that the Muggle was no longer paying attention, and recast the mild muffling charm.
"Ron, do we still have any of the safe houses from the war?" I asked, not recalling any that were still active.
"Not that I know of. We could take him to Grimmauld for now," Ron replied.
"Hermione may not like that," I said.
Neither Ron nor I would react well if Hermione brought home a stray former-Death Eater without asking us first, so we didn't expect it to go over well with her either. Of course there were extenuating circumstances, including a baby and potential murderers to factor in, which was why Ron and I were considering it in the first place. Hermione had a bleeding heart, so as soon as she knew the full story, odds were she'd champion the cause and start an organization to boot. But that was not guaranteed, because there was also a chance that this being Draco Malfoy would remind her of our stay in Malfoy Manor during the war or any of a number of insults he'd lobbed at her at school. The best course of action was to warn her, before her return and not surprise her with it. Thus I'd have to owl her.
"Well it's a good thing Hermione's gone back to her parents for the summer then, isn't it?" Ron asked I reply.
Hermione lived with me off and on. Mostly off, because she'd gone back to Hogwarts with Ginny to finish her NEWTS. Now that the school year was over, she'd decided to take some time to reconnect with her parents, who had barely recovered their memory of her when she had to leave them last fall.
"Yeah, alright. I'll take you two to my place, Malfoy," I said.
"And that girlfriend of yours, Jennifer, won't mind?" Malfoy asked.
"Ginny's away touring Europe with her team, the Holyhead Harpies," Ron said proudly. Ginny joined the Holyhead Harpies straight out of Hogwarts and had been on tour since.
"And she dumped me when she went back to school and realized I was too far away. But at least she dumped him when she went on tour," I said, referring to my successor in the long line of blokes dumped by Ginny Weasley. Well not my successor exactly, but the bloke she dumped my successor for. Like I said, the list was long and always growing longer.
"Good. Let me get our things," Draco said and Ron was fastest with the finite this time.
"Mrs. Harper, I'm going to leave with these two blokes. They promised to take care of me and Ceres. Can you get my discharge paperwork ready?" Draco asked the Muggle, still at her desk.
The Muggle agreed and Ron stayed behind to fill out the paperwork and try to find out more information regarding the Muggles who were aware of Dre's sudden miraculous gender change. Meanwhile I followed Draco back to a small room with adjoining loo. The room featured two cribs, twin sized beds, chests of drawers, and wardrobes, along with one changing table.
"We share the rooms, only I lucked out and don't usually have to have a roommate," Draco explained, pulling a knapsack out of the wardrobe and shoving it full of clothes. "Will you get the baby things out of those drawers and put them in the basket of the pram? I don't have another bag."
I agreed and asked, "Why is that then; that you don't have to share?" As I spoke, I went to the drawers indicated. Inside I found a number of plain undershirts, a stack of nappies, a container of wipes, and a handful of newborn style gowns. There was only enough clothing to last a newborn half a week, at most; I knew from experience with Teddy.
"Grandmother Malfoy was half veela. I try my best to keep the allure off, but when I'm sleeping it's harder to control. Enough supervisors got called in the middle of the night to get my roommates off me that it was easier for them to give me my own room in the male shelter. They used to send me with the gay blokes over to the women's shelter during the day, thinking that I'd have less problems there. They haven't tried rooming me with a woman before, but there were a handful of times when my allure slipped and Muggle women had to be pulled off of me. Completely ruined the best beaded bracelet I ever made; they were teaching us to make them, you know. They put it down in my file that I'm incredibly attractive to both sexes and to give me my own room, if it's at all possible. I didn't put them up to it."
"They were teaching you to make bracelets?"
"Yes, they give them out while asking for large donations to support their outreach…something or the other. Ceres' blankets are in here," Draco said, opening the bottom drawer of the wardrobe and handing over half a dozen folded receiving blankets.
I shoved the blankets in the basket of the pram along with the rest of the baby things, noting that the lot didn't even fill up half the basket. The one knapsack had been filled with Draco's Muggle clothes, which all looked ratty and in horrible shape. That was topped off with a large canister of formula and three baby bottles, one of the bottles Draco handed me to spell clean.
And then Draco pulled out a thick down coat his size and a smaller but equally thick baby snowsuit from the wardrobe. The baby snowsuit was all one piece, with arms, but no legs. He removed the sleeping newborn from the pram, dressed her in the snowsuit, and returned her to the pram, sliding the belt buckle through an opening between the legs. Ceres cried and fussed at being moved about, but settled and went back to sleep by the time he had his winter coat on.
"Where's your wand?" I asked as he moved to leave.
"Don't have one. My mother's wand burnt up in the Room of Requirement, you took my wand on Easter, and the Dark Lord took my father's wand over the summer before the war. We were all three without wands after the war. Ceres did manage to cast a warming charm with accidental magic on us when we were moved here from hospital. She doesn't like the cold, it seems," Draco answered.
"Alright, but we'll need to question you more when we get where we're going. We need to obliviate all of the Muggles who know too much."
"Only the doctor. I am intersexed."
"What's that?" I asked.
"A mix of witch and wizard. Being part veela and part human sometimes causes physical abnormalities when it comes to the sex organs, blurring the lines of sexual assignment. Because sex determination occurs differently between birds and mammals, there are sometimes both male and female traits present in the same individual. The human sex doesn't always align with the veela one. On the outside, I appear male, but the Muggles found no evidence of male parts on the inside, only female..." Draco shrugged as he trailed off.
"Wait, so you're telling me you gave birth in a Muggle hospital and no one was weirded out or anything?"
"And without them cutting me either; Ceres just popped right out. Sure some of the Muggles were confused, but I tried my best to keep my male bits covered. I attempted wandless magic to disguise the situation and I was desperate enough that I think it worked a few times. The cloaca still confused them, but only until they brought in a specialist who said they were insensitive idiots. He was the one who figured out that I'm intersexed. They call their healers doctors, by the way. Did you know that?"
"Yes, I did. Which doctor was this? I'll need to know for my report."
"Doctor Sanjay Amir Gupta, MD. He's probably my favorite Muggle so far and not just because he kept cussing at the other Muggles in his funny accent. He was all nice and concerned about Ceres. He told the Muggles that we both are something called, 'Disabled,' due to birth defects, which means the state needs to pay us for doing nothing for the rest of our lives. He wanted to take genetic samples and study us, but I declined. You are welcome, by the way."
"For what?" I asked, slightly confused.
"For covering my trail and minimizing what was left for your lot to clean up; practically no one to obliviate. You can't charge me with breaking the International Statute of Secrecy, because I didn't. I haven't cast a single spell with a wand and that one heating charm was Ceres' accidental magic. Only a week old and already shown to be magical; that's the power of pureblood for you."
"You must be so proud. Come on, Ron probably has your paperwork ready by now. Let's go," I said.
"Wait, I almost forgot," Draco said and ran into the bathroom. He threw the entire lot of toiletries, including his toothbrush, into a towel, folded it up, and put it on top the pile of baby things inside the basket of the pram. Then he tossed me his knapsack to carry and followed behind me with the pram.
Ron did indeed have Mrs. Harper at the front desk sorted and was ready to go as soon as Draco, the baby, and I made our way back out to the lobby. All the Muggle needed was a signature from Draco, before she thrust a packet of paperwork into his hands.
"Now this is your dismissal paperwork. With it, you can come back here or to another woman's shelter whenever you need. We'll guarantee your place back here for up to a month. If things aren't right and you need to come back, you can and there won't be any hassle. Also, the both of you are on government assistance, so you'll need to mail in this form here so that they know where to send your checks," here Mrs. Harper indicated one of the forms.
"Will do. Thank you Mrs. Harper," Draco replied more politely than I thought he was capable of, especially with a Muggle.
"Take care," Mrs. Harper said.
Draco nodded and then the four of us were off. "Don't suppose we can apparate with the baby, do you?" Ron asked as we set off the way we'd come.
"Not in your life Weasley. Find a floo or hail a cab. I do hope we're not going far," Draco replied, pushing the pram.
"London, actually, so it is a ways," I replied.
"The good news is that we definitely don't need to obliviate that Harper chick," Ron said. "She thinks that Draco was either pretending to be a bloke, because he's a lesbian or because dames in the system have a tendency to end up raped, or both. She said that she and the other workers at that place figured that he was just trying to keep himself safe. And given that he did end up pregnant in the system and that there are a dozen notes in his file about blokes and broads throwing themselves at him, they think one of the blokes at the other home found out and raped him."
I thought Draco would offer a protest here, but he kept silent, so I eyed him suspiciously. He had told me about the problem with Muggles throwing themselves at him, but he hadn't mentioned any actual rape attempts. From what he'd described, I imagined fully clothed lust-drunk Muggles sitting on him in his sleep and rubbing on him, before the Muggles in charge broke it up.
"A few tried; they are attracted by the veela," Draco said with a shrug. "My accidental magic took care of them."
"So there are potential rapists we need to obliviate," I concluded and Draco agreed, although he said he didn't have much information on them.
We ended up walking back to the phone booth, where Ron apparated to the Ministry and got directions to the nearest magical establishment. It was too far to walk, so we did end up hailing a cab with plans to drive to the Wizarding pub. The cabbie, however, refused to take us with a baby and no carseat. Thus there was a short side trip to a conveniently close Muggle department store where I purchased a carseat, a nappy bag, a package of bottles, a case of formula, and a package of nappies, since Draco and the baby would be staying with me and I didn't think his meager supplies were sufficient.
"She'll need somewhere to sleep, you know," Draco said, eyeing a display crib.
"She can use Teddy's crib for now. He's with Dromeda at the moment," I replied, grabbing his arm to get him moving away from the baby things, because he looked like he'd buy out the store on my Sickle if I let him. I made a mental note to track down Teddy's old newborn things to give him instead.
"You have a baby, Potter?" Draco asked, once again pushing the pram.
"My godson. He's fifteen months now. He's actually related to you; his grandmother Andromeda is your mother's sister," I explained as I steered us towards the cash register.
"I didn't like Bellatrix. If she's like Aunt Bella, I don't want her near me and Ceres."
"Polar opposites, I assure you. And she doesn't live with me; she only visits with Teddy."
That appeased Draco and we were soon in the front of the store, getting into another taxi, this time with carseat in hand, Ceres' things stowed neatly in the new nappy bag, and a couple of store bags with our remaining purchases.
"Took you long enough. This one almost wasn't going to wait any longer," Ron said, having stayed outside with the mission of hailing another taxi.
There was a minor delay when Draco proved to have no knowledge of how to install a Muggle child's seat. Ron didn't either, so I had to do it myself. But eventually, we all piled in the cab, Ron in the front and Draco and I in the back on either side of the baby. During the short journey, I wrote down the secret to my house and made Draco read it, before destroying the scrap of parchment. When we reached the Wizarding restaurant, we flooed to Grimmauld Place.
We stowed our coats and I got Draco and the baby set up in Teddy's room on the second floor. There was a break for Draco to tend to Ceres, who required a bottle and a burp, before falling back to sleep. Then Ron and I returned to questioning him for our report.
The majority of our questions now had to deal with the murder of Draco's parents. We were unaware they had been murdered or were even dead. In the chaos following the war, all three Malfoys had simply fallen off the Earth. Now we were learning that they had been kidnapped at wand point when none of the three had a wand. They were taken by Nikos Jugson and Caddaham Avery to an old rundown hovel near the edge of their property, where they were bound and gagged. They were tortured to give up powerful and potentially dangerous artifacts of Voldemort's that they had allegedly had in the Manor. Only these items had never existed as far as the Malfoys knew and if they did, they hadn't been left at Malfoy Manor.
Narcissa died from a slashing curse with a little too much enthusiasm behind it. Lucius and Draco had then retaliated and tried to force their way out with only their brute strength. When it became clear that they wouldn't both get away, Lucius sacrificed himself and sent Draco on ahead. Draco was found by Muggles and taken to a Muggle hospital. He was dazed and confused due to his head injury and ended up giving away the location of his torture to the Muggle police. The Muggles found the bodies and buried them, after gathering what evidence they could.
Draco remained in hospital until his head healed without magic. At first the head injury kept him from knowing what was going on, so he stayed. When he began to recover, he stayed for fear that the Death Eaters would find him if he stepped out into Wizarding society again. He even feared the Death Eaters had staged a comeback and retaken the Ministry, since no one had come for him. Here he had been kidnapped, his parents murdered in front of him, and entered into the Muggle system, and yet no one from Magical Law Enforcement came; if I hadn't have had firsthand experience with the chaos that followed the war, I might've thought the same myself.
The first wizard Draco saw after the kidnapping was Zekiel Smith. That was the first he learned of the status of the Wizarding world and the rounding up of Death Eaters. He stayed with Smith in a magical tent Smith had brought with him in a nearby wooded area for two days and two nights. He asked Smith to stay with him in Britain and try to beat the Death Eater rap, since he didn't think we'd have much evidence on either of them. Smith had asked him to go on the run, but he'd declined, unwilling to abandon Malfoy Manor.
The parting between Draco and Smith had not been mutually agreed upon. Draco had been under the impression that Smith was still considering staying when he went down to a stream to bathe. By the time he returned, Smith and the tent were gone.
Draco hadn't filled out the proper discharge paperwork before taking off with Smith, so he still had his place in the Muggle home. He was a mess from being out in the elements and tired from walking back, so he gave the Muggles the excuse that he'd gotten lost in the woods after being chased by men who wanted to rape him. Men wanting to rape him was apparently a common reaction to his veela allure and was easily believed by Muggles.
"I'm fairly proficient at keeping it tampered down; Father spent the entire summer before third year teaching me. But when I'm frightened or overly stressed, it sometimes leaks out. It started happening to me sixth year; everyone kept teasing me that the reason you were so obsessed with me and kept following me, Potter, was the allure," Draco explained.
"I never noticed it; I've always been immune," Harry said with a shrug.
"And what, exactly, did Smith do?" Ron asked.
"He left me. He didn't marry me, so it's his fault Ceres is a bastard. And he's a fucking bloody wanker," Draco answered angrily.
"In the war, we mean. You said he was a Death Eater; what laws did he break," I specified.
"Creating a bastard is against pureblood moral law," Draco drawled. "Ceres can never legally inherit from either of our families as long as she's not adopted."
"But the Ministry has changed all that archaic nonsense. Children born of unmarried couples have just as much right to inherit and receive child support as anyone," Harry interjected.
"With my money maybe. He can claim she isn't his and duck child support and all responsibility. Sure I could leave her Galleons and maybe even the house too, but she can't take my last name and titles. It's not even that I want her to have his, but that she can't have mine."
"She's a girl. She was never going to be Lord Malfoy anyway," Ron dismissed.
"No, but she might have been Lady Malfoy and her husband might have been Lord Malfoy. Now I have to come up with an inheritance for her and produce a legitimate heir," Draco retorted.
I felt bad for Draco and wished that I could single handedly change pureblood inheritance laws for his daughter. Maybe I could get Hermione interested in it and work up a petition. But I couldn't do that now, because right now Ron and I still had a job to do.
"Back to Smith's crimes; what Ministry laws did he break?" Ron clarified.
"I saw him torture Muggles and steal from Muggleborns," Draco replied with a shrug, as if these were the least of Smith's crimes.
"Is that all?" Ron asked, in a manner that implied we saw cases of Muggle torture every day; and we practically did.
"Yes. But that's enough, isn't it?" Draco replied.
"To earn him five years maybe. The prison system is a bit overcrowded at the moment," Ron said.
"I hand you over a Death Eater, one of the Dark Lord's followers, and your lot is going to let him go with only five years? Unlike me, he joined up voluntarily," Draco retorted.
"We'll see what we can do, but we can't promise you anything," Ron said and Draco scowled.
"Right, so we have enough details on the double murder for our initial report; that's our first priority and bringing Smith in is second. We need to gather a team and see what evidence can still be found of the murders. And we'll send a Muggle expert to scour the Muggle system for whatever evidence they gathered. We almost certainly will have follow up questions for you, Malfoy. But the good news is that Nikos Jugson and Caddaham Avery are dead. They refused to be taken alive," I said, steering the subject back on track.
"Good. I hope they suffered," Draco replied.
"So what I don't understand, Malfoy, is what you being a veela has to do with the Muggles now thinking you're a woman?" Ron asked. Potentially obliviating Muggles was also on our to-do list and for that, we needed accurate details on who knew what.
"I'm not stripping to show you, but if you are so interested, I will let you change Ceres' nappy. By the smell of it, it's a poopy one," Draco said, holding his daughter up to hand over.
Ron eyed me warily and I shrugged. I stood up and scooped the baby out of Draco's and Ron's arms, taking her to the changing table in Teddy's room. Ron followed, so I instructed him to break out the nappies we'd just purchased. Sure enough, the dirty nappy was filled with mustard colored watery newborn poo, which I cleaned off with wipes I had for Teddy.
"So that's what a veela looks like down there," Ron said, looking down over my shoulder. Instead of an anus, there was a cloaca, but the rest appeared human. "I wonder if Fleur looks like that."
I finished quickly, fastening a fresh nappy in place.
"So, er, veela, eh?" I asked.
"And that is why we need the allure to mate with non-veela; it's the easiest way to get you mammal-wired sex fiends off," Draco said from the doorway, having followed his baby.
Ron shrugged and said, "I always heard they were different down there, but no one's ever really told me how."
"Actually veela males and veela females are identical on the outside, just like birds. It's only the hybrids who have both. I have male parts on the outside, so they assumed I was entirely male. They did a chromosome test when I was little that revealed a human X chromosome and a veela X. In humans, two Xes make a female, but in birds, two Xes make a male. My father is a two X male, and so was his father. From our family history, it seemed that I would be too, but I wasn't. I began to suspect something was off when I came of age," Draco said.
"So how can they know when a baby, like your Ceres, is a XX human female or an XX hybrid male?" Harry asked.
"Easy; a human female would have human reproductive parts, not the veela ones."
"So are you and Ceres hybrid males then?" Harry asked, confused.
"No. I have the same XX chromosomal arrangement as my father and grandfather, but for whatever reason, my body is expressing the human sex internally. Ceres has a veela X and a human Y chromosome, making her a veela female and she also appears to be a human female. Confused Dr. Gupta at first, so he ordered all these fancy scans on her. He said her internal organs are one hundred percent female, which pretty much seals it. Come to think of it, if there is anyone who needs obliviating, it's him, because he has this whole hypothesis on what's going on in our family. He thinks there must be something called a 'mutation' that Ceres and I share that messes up our sex organs. Like I said, he was very interested in studying us, but I turned him down."
"Imagine that; going your whole life thinking you're a bloke and then waking up one day and realizing your parents got it wrong," Ron said.
"I doubt they got you wrong, Weasley; you would make one ugly witch," Draco said. "And I am still a wizard. A few of the wrong spare parts doesn't change my gender identity."
Ron shuddered and I snickered at the thought of Ron as a girl. "Will you be alright here Draco? Ron and I have a report to fill out and we're still on duty," I said.
"I just need to know how to warm up a bottle in this place," Draco replied.
"Call Kreacher; he's my elf," I said.
"You are coming back tonight, right?" Draco asked, sounding more vulnerable than before.
"Yes, why?" I asked.
"Because I'm used to sleeping with a guard at the front door. I won't be able to sleep if I'm completely alone; what if the Death Eaters come for me?"
"Malfoy, you know that parchment you had to read to enter?" Ron asked in reply.
"Yes…" Draco's voice was hesitant.
"That means that this house is under the Fidelius Charm, which is the strongest protection known to Wizarding kind. We had a gang of Death Eaters gathered outside on the walk during the war, but they couldn't get in. Harry, Hermione, and I slipped in and out right under their noses," Ron said smugly.
There was the one breach during the war that had caused us to flee, when Hermione accidentally brought a Death Eater, Yaxley, with us when we fled the Ministry with the locket. We had cleared out, because we didn't know what the consequences of that breach would be and we couldn't risk it. After the war it was revealed that Yaxley had stumbled around inside the house ransacking the place. And although Yaxley was able to reenter whenever he wished, he was unable to let anyone else into the house. He knew the secret, but wasn't the secret keeper. That meant that once Yaxley was killed in battle, the safety of Grimmauld Place was restored.
Ron and I didn't bother mentioning any of that to Draco, since we were trying to instill confidence, not shatter it. I also didn't mention the fact that there were an abnormally large number of secret keepers for the house, since everyone Dumbledore had told were now keepers. Granted over half of them were also recently deceased, but there were still plenty keepers left alive; it was a good job I trusted each and every one of them with my life.
"We are safe here, then?" Draco asked.
"Yes, we are all safe. Our shift ends at midnight; I'll come straight back after," I reassured. "Will you be alright until then?"
Draco nodded and seemed fine on his own. I still had his wand in a drawer somewhere and I considered hunting it down and giving it back to him now. But then I didn't know how much I could trust him and I was already leaving him alone in my house, so I decided against it. I would do it later, once I'd tracked down a few more Muggles to verify his story and he'd cooperated with bringing in Zekiel Smith.
And then Ron and I were apparating back to work to fill out what had to be the weirdest case report we'd come across so far. We would probably be laughing over this night for years to come.
Author's Note: For those of you who missed it, that is the ending right there.