Chapter Nine

Disclaimer: I own nothing of J.K Rowlings or her Harry Potter, but I do like to play in her world whenever possible!

Thanks to my constant reviewers!!

A blur.

Everything was a blur.

He could hear their voices though, shouting to each other and yelling at him with urgency. To do what? Draco didn't know. One of them was ordering another to apparate his bleeding wife to St. Mungos. Another voice was pitching a fit about the train their children were presently on. His son was on. He had sent him to his death. That's what she had said wasn't it?

" Malfoy!"

He was drowning in the blur of words and faces. Every color turned to heavy shades of black and white when he tried to focus on the shapes hovering over him. All except the crimson color of Nora's blood, screaming at him from the ground she lay under and his hands that just wouldn't let her lifeless body go.

" He's in shock Harry!"

" I don't think I can apparate the both of us." His voice wasn't his own. It cracked and shook when he spoke. " Take her. Someone take her."

Before he could bend his head to glimpse his wife again, she was gone from his hands the only reminder she had ever been there was the blood that had drained from her body.

" Malfoy!"

Harry was standing over him. Draco slowly got to his feet, feeling crippled and heavy.

" The Aurors intercepted the train. There was no sign of Avedra or any other death eater." It was Ron's voice mixing with Harry's. " They're staying with the train until it reaches Hogwarts."

" Malfoy! Did you hear Ron? He's fine. Scorpius is okay."

" McGonagall's been informed. The protection spells are still in tact about the school, and the staff is going about strengthening them as we speak."

" She's a muggle."

Both men stopped speaking instantly, training their eyes on Draco like a bullet blasting from a gun.

" Who? You're wife?" He had to be in shock, Harry thought. Draco must be in some alternate universe where he forgot to spit after using the dirty word. Ginny said nothing about Draco's wife being a muggle? Harry looked to Ron, who looked just as boggled by the paler than usual wizard standing before them.

" He's muggleborn." Whatever happened to mudblood? Ron shook his head in disbelief.

" Scorpius?"

" She's going to kill them to get to me." The lineage. Avedra's lineage. Draco's lineage. How did she know? How did she find him? " She won't stop until they're dead."

" Malfoy." One of them said his name, he had no idea which one.

" I have to get to the hospital." Draco forgot the pair of wizards he had now sent into their own state of shock. " I have to get to the hospital."

" Tell Hermione we're gone to the castle." Harry spoke above his own amazement with this unfamiliar Draco. " Tell her the kids are at Molly Weasley's, okay? Can you do that Malfoy?! Malfoy! Can you do that?!"

There was so many questions that Harry wanted to ask, questions he knew he had to ask. His work for the Order had not stopped after Voldemort was destroyed. He knew that there was more than a few deatheaters still hiding away, and he knew that the woman Malfoy was referring to was one of them.

Draco nodded, stuffing the orders from the boy-who-lived into a compartment in his brain where he would try and retrieve it later.

Later when Nora was fine. When she was yelling and smacking him upside his head again. Later when she wasn't bleeding her blood, and their baby was still snug and safe in her womb. Later when she opened her eyes to look at Draco, and he saw life there, within the eyes that he had lost himself in long ago.

" Don't tell my son what's happened Potter."

" I won't Malfoy."

Silence wrapped about them, before words Draco had never a spoken to either Harry or Ron suddenly developed and escaped him.

" Thank you."

The three wizards stared at one another for what seemed like days, a quick reality sinking feircly within the men when the two simple words were spoken from the enemies mouth.

" Both of you...thank you."

The reality was ironic and odd. It was unsettling and hilarious. It was insane but somehow made sense.

With two words of appreciation, the wizard with the dark mark forged on his left forearm was no longer the enemy.


" I don't know Malfoy! I'm sorry. I've been asking them to tell me, but I'm not family..."

" What room is my wife in?!" Draco turned his back from a sobbing Hermione Weasley, and landed his frustration and panic on top of the head of a tiny woman with wild unruly turqoise hair. The secretary with the tag name Fifi, sat behind an oval reception desk blankly staring at the sniffling witch and the red faced wizard, who was now yelling at her.

" We cannot let you see your wife at this time Mr. Malfoy." Her voice stayed calm, like this scenario had been part of her training and Draco was her first test.

" I don't bloody give a flying fuck what you cannot do! I want to see my wife!" The words do you know who I am almost spat from his mouth, but he decided that St. Mungos and it's staff knowing who he was, could possibly hinder his wife and unborn baby getting the help they needed. " So either do whatever it is you do, get off your witless ass and find me the bloody healer who is taking care of Nora Malfoy!"

" Sir screaming at me will get you no closer to seeing the patient." A pair of bored eyes traveled away from him. " When your wife is stable enough to take visitors, I'm sure Healer Bruxy will be down to speak with you."

" Are you kidding me!?" Draco fell backwards when Hermione pushed him solidly out of the way. When her hands slapped down hard on the oval desk, Fifi jumped in her swivel seat, her attention now on full alert before the seething woman glowering at her. " I understand that you have a job to do, and that this is probably the most exciting aspect about it, but let me assure you this man is not a visitor. Besides being a husband and a father to the patient, he's also a former deatheater."

Fifi's violet colored eyes snapped to Draco, whose mouth was hanging open and directed at Hermione who to his horror, was still talking.

" Now, this can go one of two ways Fifi. You can either go about the rest of your life knowing that this deatheater knows what you look like, your name, where you work or you can point us in the direction to where Mrs. Malfoy is being cared for, and he goes away, closer to seeing his wife and farther away from you."

" First floor. Creature induced injuries." Fifi squeaked, still staring at Draco in fear. " I'm not sure of the room number sir, I'm sorry."

Draco launched himself away from the desk, taking no time to defend himself to the little receptionist who was now on the verge of tears. Hermione followed him, taking on a small run just to keep up with his long strides. The first floor opened up to them, two massive glass doors swinging open for them before Draco had a chance to slam his weight into it.

It was a smaller ward, maybe the smallest of St. Mungos. The hallway was long, white and looked clean like someone had bleached all the color out of the walls, floor and the ceiling. Draco squinted his eyes against the harshness that enveloped him and Hermione as they walked the length of the corridor. Room after room was on either side of them, and there was no sign of life from behind any of them. The silence urked him. He cleared his throat that was constricting with each step he took towards another large oval desk, just so he could hear something other than Hermione's heels as they tapped away behind him.

Behind the desk a man about his age stood with his head down over a yellow file, obviously absorbed in whatever he was reading. Draco knew he was a healer by the dress robe he was wearing. It was floor length and a deep shade of gold, with a thick white collar about his neck in the shape of a V. There was a pen stuck behind the wizards ear, and the tip of his wand was visible from one of the folds in the material.

When Draco cleared his throat again, the man looked up from his parchment and nodded his acknowlegement. " Mr. Malfoy?"

Draco nodded. " My wife. Nora Malfoy..."

The healer nodded as well, and stepped out from behind the desk taking another three files with him as he did. He offered Draco his hand which he took inadvertantly. His mind was no where near the mannerly introductions the healer was making. All Draco knew was Nora was somewhere behind one of theses doors and he needed to be there with her.

" Where is she?"

" We have her resting in a special room at the moment Mr. Malfoy. But if I could, I do have some questions about your wifes health history as well as the attack itself. "

" Is she okay? Is the baby okay?"

A sudden flurry of pity washed across the healers expression that had went from professional to human all too quickly. Draco sucked in a breath, feeling his knees buckle slightly when the healer asked him if he would sit down.

" We do have more tests that we will need to do before I can divulge any kind of prognosis."

" What kind of tests?" Hermione had decided to sit once Draco refused it. Her gaze slid between Draco and Bruxy as the healer continued to speak.

" Your wife Mr. Malfoy, was infected when the werewolf attacked her. We're lucky she wasn't bitten however. If that had been the case, the effects would have been irreversable." Henry Bruxy wished the man would take a seat. " For precaution we do have your wife quarantined. I myself have never worked a werewolf case, where the victim of the attack was a muggle, so I have my staff especially the ones who have seen these kind of cases before working diligently to make sure that any infection is cleared from her system before we release her."

" The baby." His voice was strained again and thick from the newest emotion he was encountering. His heart was tight in his chest and every beat it took gave way for another surge of heaviness he couldn't place. The baby. His child. He realized than how little time he had spent thinking on his first born. While Nora was re-reading books, taking breathing classes and buying small pieces of clothes for their child, Draco had been more worried about everything else that was tangled up in his life. Sure he had been there for the sonograms and the ultrasounds. He had been intrigued and just a little freaked out when the sounds of a faster than light heartbeat had began to echo off the walls of the doctors office decorated with smiling toothless babies staring at him from the posters that didn't move. He had done what was expected of him as a father to be, but now that he thought about it, now that his kids life hung so dangerously in the balance, Draco realized he didn't know the child, his child, growing in his wifes stomach. The thought clutched at his heart and twisted it with no mercy.

" The baby is extremly weak Mr. Malfoy. The heart rate is low and we have done everything we can to bring it to a more stable level, but at the moment it has not changed in a positive way."

He was going to throw up.

" When the werewolf stabbed your wife, it missed the child and the womb, which in itself served as a protective barrier from the wound. Instead, the curse that Nora was hit with did more damage to the baby. That's why the heart rate is so low. We beleive that the child is almost caught in the curse."

" Caught?"

Draco couldn't speak. He was glad Hermione was there to do it for him.

" When the curse hit Nora, her body, and the life growing inside of her absorbed the after shocks. Presently, the baby is still enduring the pain."

" You must be able to do something!" Hermione was on her feet again, like this time she was going to threaten the healer with Draco's deatheater status.

" The only thing we could do would be to deliver the child now, but it would be dangerous to both mother and baby to do so. The infection is being fought, but the extraction could hinder the progress Nora is making as well as drop the babies heart rate considerably." He took a haggard breath. " But it could also go the other way as well. We keep the child inside it's mother while we wait for Nora to fight off any remnant of infection and we could end up losing them both in the process."

Draco's head shot up from the clean white ground he was standing on. " Lose them?"

" Yes Mr. Malfoy. Either way it is very likely that your wife, the baby or both could be at extreme risk if we do something or we don't do anything."

" Jesus...no." Draco turned away from both healer and Hermione, and paced his way to the other end of the hall. His hands went to his hair, than down over his face where they stayed while he tried to breath through the panic clawing it's way through him. When a fist slammed against the brick wall of the ward, the healer jumped slightly. Hermione did nothing. Yes, it was Draco Malfoy waging war on a wall that was going to win, but no one, not even a Malfoy deserved to be in the place that he was now in.

" You have to do something!" Draco came up for air, not noticing the skin on his knuckles was torn and shredded. Drops of his blood spotted the floor and left a trail toward the healer and Hermione as he made his way back to them. " Do something!"

The healer took a step back from the wizard now closing in on him. " But they may die.You do undertand that?"

" You said that either way I could lose my wife and our child. I'm not going to stand by and do nothing, not even try to save them and let them go without some kind of fight! Do you understand me?!"

" You'll...you'll have to sign consent...a consent form." The man looked mental. His eyes were hazy with simmering hot rage as he peered down at the healer.

Draco ripped the pen from behind Henry Bruxy's ear, who took two more steps away from the manic wizard. " I'll sign it. But I want it made perfectly clear that that woman and that baby are mine. Do you get that? They are mine. This hospital can do things that no muggle hospital in the fucking world is capable of, so if anyone, anyone can save the lives of my family it's you. And I expect it. I expect you to keep them both breathing."

" Malfoy, please."

Hermione had put herself between Draco and the now quaking healer. Bruxy took this as his cue to run off and grab the insential paperwork that the deranged Mr. Malfoy would have to sign in order for him and his team to begin the proceedings.

" Do you know what you're asking of him?"

" Yes." He growled.

Draco clutched the arms of the chair he had taken a seat in, feeling the tips of his fingers pulsing away under the pressure. He knew it. Deep down he knew it. But he had to do something, he couldn't sit by and do nothing. Nora would want him to do this. He knew that all too well. If he didn't, she would never forgive him, and that was worse that him never forgiving himself.

The healer appeared before them both again, and handed Mafloy three pieces paper. The pen he held twitched in his hand as it rested against the white sheet with prominent black lettering shreiking up at him as he read the reality of what he was about to agree to.

And before he knew his hand had even moved and formed the letters to make his name, he was passing the parchments back to the healer, signed and consented.


" The Sorting Ceremony has been postphoned due to recent happenings that has detained Headmistress McGonagall for the duration of the evening. All first years, will be sorted tommorow afternoon, but for the time being will spend the night in the great hall."

The great hall filled with murmurs and whispers at the announcment, but not one of the first years made any kind of peep. Maybe it was because of the ultimate awe that they were all presently under, or maybe it was due to the unimaginable food now decorating the tables before them that had distracted them all from the obvious concern and anxiety washing about the walls of Hogwarts.

Somehow it was a good thing. Scorpius barely noticed the professors whispers and glances his way. James as well was too busy impressing a group of girls with the stories and antics of his famous father to take notice. Rose was engrossed in another book, only coming up for air to swipe a chocolate off the table or steal a glance at the white blond wizard seated across from her. When the doors to the hall opened up and the aurors that had taken the train hostage made another appearance, only than did all three children make an attempt at craning their necks above the crowd to see the upheaval the cloaked witches and wizards were causing.

" Where's your dad Rosie?" James used Scorpius's shoulder as leverage to see over the second years now blocking his view.

Rose shrugged, but kept her eyes trained on the group that her father was absent from. " I don't know...I wonder what's happened?" She hated her fathers job. Sure it was noble and he was doing work that she knew he loved, but he was still her dad and she worried whenever he was called out to hunt the bad wizards. As far as Rose was concerned her father didn't need to be an Auror to be a hero for the world. It should be enough that he was her hero all the time.

" I heard Lola Longbottom say that the Aurors stopped and boarded the train because of it was going to be attacked or something." James had given up his attempt to see over the heads of his classmates and went back to stabbing his fork at another mouthful of garlic mashed potato.

" Why would anyone want to attack a train full of kids?" Rose ventured a look to Scorpius, who shrugged in return. She noticed than that his ice blue eyes looked worried. " Are you okay Scorpius?"

He nodded, and went back to studying these Aurors. They fought bad wizards. Dragged them off to Azakaban prison according to James and left them there to rot because of the evil things that they've done.

Scorpius had heard alot on the way to Hogwarts. He was glad his dad had told him the story of Harry Potter and Voldemort. It didn't make him feel so left out of the world he was only new to. James had no problem filling him in on everything that was of importance, and did so the entire train ride. So Scorpius was now familiar with James dad, and Rose's mum and dad. He knew that they were all in Griffindor house and James knew he was going to be in his fathers old house as well. Rose didn't seem to really care where she got placed, but when Scorpius asked her if she would mind Huffelpuff, she cringed, and he knew how she felt. James said he was a half blood. Rose told him that being a halfblood was perfectly fine, and she as well as James were far from pureblood. He didn't understand, and decided that the candy lady at their compartment door was more interesting then blood.

" You'll be in Slytherin."

" Why?"

James popped a bertie bottes jelly bean into his mouth, than screwed up his face and spit it out, proving the pink bean was anything but sweet. " Because your dad's a Malfoy and my dad told me that generations of Malfoys have always been placed in Slytherin."

" Really?"

" Yup." James tried again with a fresh jelly bean and this time came up with a bean that tasted much better than the pink one now joining the wrappers piling up at their feet." I thought you would have known that?"

Scorpius thought so too, but decided not to say anything.

The hall was slowly emptying now, all except for the first years who were ordered to stay where they were. Rose went back to reading her newest book Hogwarts: A history. James continued to eat, and than eat some more. Scorpius tried to distract himself, either by staring at the sky above their heads, or by flicking well hidden looks Rose Weasley's way. He found the latter distracted him more so than the ceiling sparkling above him.

The group of Aurors had dispearsed from the great hall as well, but for some reason Scorpius guessed that they were still in the castle. He watched some of the ghosts hover up and down the tables, every now and than blinking their very much alive eyes towards the windows of the hall. Scorpius reminded himself that the ghosts, especially a nasty one named Peeves, the giant name Hagrid and his even bigger of a giant brother Gworp who had greeted them once off the train would be two things he would need to ask his father about. He already disliked Peeves very much and wondered why his dad hadn't mentioned the nasty ghost.

When a raven colored owl swooped down towards the table where the three children sat and dropped a letter directly on to Scorpius's plate, he knew what this was. His dad had told him about the owl he owned, how he was black like a crow and had a tendency to bite if it didn't like who it was delivering the post to. Fortunatley, for Scorpius the owl he knew to be named Daemon, clucked quietly and briskly let Scorpius run a hand through his feathers before taking off again to wherever owls go when they weren't playing postman.

" You got a letter already?" James spoke though a mouthful of sweet bread.

Scorpius nodded, upon seeing his fathers handwriting scibbled across the front of the envelope. His heart jumped slightly in his chest, but he hoped his delight at the letter wasn't too obvious. Besides James now hanging over his shoulder probing him to open it up, Rose looked interested as well. The last thing he wanted either of them to think was he was already home sick for his family...

He opened it quickly, hoping that his dad didn't ask too many questions and his mom kept the mushy stuff for when he came home to see the baby.

Hey Kiddo,

Yes, we miss you already. After you left your mum cried, but she knows you're okay were you are. And that's the main thing right?That you and your friends are safe. I heard that the sorting ceremony was being put off, and I have to apologize to you for that. I know that you're looking forward to being sorted into Griffindor and even though I didn't try it, I did have some hand in the reason as to why you aren't in your yellow and red house colors yet.

Now, I can't get into details Scorpius, but I want you to know that everything is okay. After you left today, mum was hurt. We got her to the hospital, a wizarding hospital called St. Mungos and the healers here took care of her. A healer is just like a doctor Scorp, except they use magic to make people better, like they did for mum.

Anyway, the reason why I can't get into a detailed explanation, is because I'm busy making sure your mum is getting better, which she is. She wanted me to write to you and tell you how much we love you kid, and we can't wait to see you...oh and I almost forgot, we also wanted to tell you that you're a big brother now Scorp. That's another reason why I can't write as long and as much as I would want to. I'm busy with not just one lady, but two now. We haven't got a name for your little sister yet, and we decided to wait until you got here to see her for yourself, maybe help us go about it right.

She's really screaming now Scorp, not the baby, your mum. Something about water and me being useless, so I'd better go and tend to them both.

We love you Scorp and I'll write again tommorow and let you know when you can come and see your sister.

Love so much

Dad and Mum

ps: Watch out for the poltergeist called Peeves. I think I might have forgotten to mention him.

Read and Review Please!!

Please let me know what you think!

To Huddelup: I thought about the idea of infecting the baby or Nora and having one or both maybe become a werewolf of some kind. I think it's a wicked idea, but I would end up all over the place with this story. Although I think it would tie in well with Draco trying to come to terms with the love he feels for Nora and his family as well as dispising himself for loving a muggle...imagine trying to love a muggle turned werewolf? That would be a story!

Anyway people, next chapter Avedra and her gang of deatheaters will make another appearance. When I wrote that she will not stop until Draco's family is dead, I really did mean it. Oh the drama! I plan to have Draco and Avedra come face to face soon. Ultimatums of course will be made. Question is, who will be making them?

Also, if anyone has any suggestions for the newest Malfoys name that would be awesome to see!! Post!!

Once again, REVIEW!! PLEASE!!