a/n: I really wish i had a good excuse for not updating but i don't, so instead i'll just give you a new chapter and thank all of you for sticking around despite my lousy updating.
Chapter 9 – Draco
They'd had another argument this morning, something stupid that wasn't even a big deal but had somehow opened the door for a fight about what he was planning to do for the day. Draco wished he could say it was unusual, that tensions were running high because they were all running on next to no sleep (he really couldn't wait for the night when Scorpius slept through) and he couldn't say he blamed Artemis for demanding he spell her room to block out the wailing her little brother seemed to do almost every night.
He supposed he got it, he was leaving his wife home alone on his day off (the day he traditionally took the lead so she could rest) just to go and spend a few hours activating maps and old connections they hadn't used in a decade to help with a fight she didn't think was their problem. There was even a part of him that agreed with her. But that didn't stop him from jumping at the chance to volunteer to take first watch.
Because what he didn't know how to tell Astoria – mostly because she didn't want to hear it – was that he was bored out of his bloody mind with the life they were living and couldn't he for once get to do the exciting thing? He loved his wife, he really did, and he knew he'd done the right thing all those years ago setting up the new hospital in his family's sprawling manor, but there was only so much politics he could handle before he stopped caring about charity events and raising money and frankly just wanted to beat the shit out of something.
No one but Artemis knew about the training dummy he kept in the broom shed, and he'd bought her silence with the promise that he'd teach her everything he knew when she turned eight. So the chance to get back into the fight and out of his stuffy (though admittedly huge) office at the hospital had been one he'd eagerly jumped at.
Spending the day with the Potter girls was bound to add some much needed mischief and excitement. Possibly danger if they were anything like their parents. He had heard the story about Dudley and the flaming sofa, after all.
And actually, that reminded him that he needed to visit his aunt at some point. He'd been putting it off for fear that she'd tell him to get over himself but Tonks had mentioned she'd come down with something and unless he wanted to get an earful from his cousin he'd best make time to see Andromeda.
'Want some breakfast?' Ally asked, startling him out of his thoughts. He'd been so preoccupied he hadn't even noticed he'd made it all the way up the garden path to the Potter's kitchen door. Had he knocked? He couldn't remember and he didn't want to answer questions if he asked Ally about it.
'Sure,' he agreed easily, 'I won't say no.'
Ally nodded and he followed her deeper into the kitchen where Harry was frowning over some file or other and the girls were practically bouncing out of their chairs in excitement. Harry didn't even bother to look up from his work, just mumbled a distracted greeting and reached for a piece of parchment and a quill.
Ally rolled her eyes but set a plate of eggs before him before offering one to Draco. 'Work,' she explained. 'He's hoping that if he can get all of his proper work over and done with then he'll have more time to focus on our mystery.'
Draco didn't question that, it seemed reasonable enough to him. 'You got anything more for me before I start sending owls and messages?'
Ally shook her head. 'I wish I could say we do or even that we're overreacting but the more I think about it the surer I am that this man is someone we have to worry about. I'm getting the dreams nearly every night now but we've given the kids dreamless sleep potions to stop them from getting them now.'
'They were getting really, really creepy,' James supplied helpfully. 'And making me flame in my sleep really badly.'
'I didn't mind when you ended up in Prague,' Harry murmured easily, still not looking up. 'It was the time you flamed right on top on me when I was going up the stairs that annoyed me.'
Draco laughed and finished off his eggs in short order. 'Ready to go, ladies?'
'Yes!' Their enthusiasm was catching and Draco wished Artemis could have tagged along but he'd had a quiet word with her before he left about helping out her mother. That had also involved bribery but the trip to Diagon Alley for ice cream was one he could happily get behind. Should he have been worried about the amount of time he spent bribing his own daughter?
He took the girls by the hand and instructed them to flame to Fred's shop in Hogsmeade. Although they'd been there plenty of times before he knew they'd never ventured further than the cemetery on the outskirts of the village and would appreciate the view they'd get walking up the road toward Hogwarts. He wanted to make sure their first view of the school was as amazing as it should always be, especially given that he was spoiling the sight of it on that first little boat ride.
'Do you think Hagrid is home?' James asked as they began the long walk up the road. 'We haven't seen him in a while because Mum says he's busy during the school year.'
'Probably teaching lessons,' Draco said vaguely. He hoped for this new generation's sake that the half-giant had gotten a lot better at teaching than he'd been when he was at school. He didn't hold Hagrid in such low esteem as he once had but he'd never respect him as a teacher after those first bumbling years. It was something he and Harry liked to argue about when they got bored but Harry always lost because, love Hagrid though he did, he couldn't exactly deny those disastrous lessons.
They took a bend in the road and the gates of Hogwarts came into view. The big iron gates sat open and welcoming, a far cry from how they'd stood for the majority of his time there. The girls' excitement picked up and they broke into some sort of skipping run, eager to round that next corner to get a nice look at the castle.
'Wow!' they exclaimed in unison, making him smile. For a little while he just let them stand in the driveway taking it all in. The towers and windows, the big sloping lawns and the lake and forest; it was a truly magnificent sight. You couldn't tell that large bits of it had been destroyed during the battle with Voldemort. There was nothing to show on the lawns that Ally had burned a devastating path through Death Eaters and dark creatures to get to Voldemort.
As they moved closer to the castle, students started popping into view. They seemed to be taking advantage of the nice weather and were getting in a bit of freedom before they started worrying about exams. They received a few curious looks but no one seemed to think stopping to ask them what they were doing was worth the effort. Ahead of him, the girls had started murmuring excitedly about wearing Hogwarts robes and getting a wand.
Honestly, Draco was surprised Harry hadn't already taken Alex to get a wand but he supposed when you could burst into flames at will that really was enough magic to be putting on the table at such a young age. He didn't envy Emmy when she started teaching in the next term. Or Snape for that matter, there were some incredibly flammable vapours floating about the Potions dungeon, he didn't want to be around when something exploded – and he knew it would.
Snape was waiting for them at the bottom of the front steps, lip curled in a snarl at a pair of students possibly doing something wrong but more likely they'd just gotten in his way. Draco had never found the Potions Master particularly scary but then again he'd always thought he'd known more about Snape than everyone else and that had leant him some leniency from the wizard.
He regretted now, just how wrong he had been. He regretted a lot of things about his youth, least of which was how he had strutted around the castle like he owned the place. There were far too many things related to his family and Voldemort to worry about something so silly as childhood posturing.
'I've had the house elves tidy it up,' Snape informed them. 'I don't suggest you go into the lab until one of the twins has had a chance to check it.'
Draco nodded his understanding and held out his hands to each of the Potter girls. It was worth the risk of burns to know that he hadn't lost them somewhere in the castle. He'd never hear the end of it if they wandered away and he wasn't in the mood to track them all over the castle. Not until he knew for sure the old map was still functioning.
'Avoid the third floor,' Snape advised, turning down another corridor that would take them along a slightly longer route. 'Peeves got hold of some joke products.'
'Peeves!' Alex said in delight. 'Can we go and meet him? Dad always talks about Peeves.'
Snape didn't even miss a beat, just said, 'No Peeves.'
Alex didn't seem particularly concerned about the denial; Draco figured she was already planning just how she could meet up with Peeves when she finally started school. He really hoped, for the sake of the other students, that she didn't have some sort of meeting of the minds with Sirius or the twins before that happened.
Flitwick and McGonagall were waiting for them in the old ADADA rooms. The house elves had done a good job of tidying up the dust and cobwebs but they couldn't activate the dormant spells and they couldn't send out all the messages and activate old networks. That was something Draco would need to spend the day doing. Given the way his morning had gone, he was quite looking forward to catching up with some old friends.
'Is it really so bad?' Flitwick questioned.
'Its bad,' Draco confirmed. 'The whole Potter family has been having prophetic dreams for months and now this man has been released from some tomb by the curse breakers. Its definitely not good.'
McGonagall sighed. 'This is why we've elected to hire a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Even Sybil has felt something coming.'
'What?' Draco's disbelief was shared by all of them. 'Trelawney actually predicted something?'
Judging by the way McGonagall was pursing her lips she didn't want to believe it anymore than they did. 'Albus always advised me to heed her warnings when she wasn't paying attention to her words. A few months ago she mentioned in passing that I should consider filling the DADA position with an old member of the ADADA.'
Draco mulled this over and then decided that it was easier just to go along with it than to question McGonagall taking something Trelawney said seriously. 'Well, that's just great.'
They talked a bit more about the other changes that had been made to the castle such as which of the secret passages were still there and which ones had been blocked off or rerouted during the repairs to the castle. He'd have to get the changes to Sirius and hope the Marauder remembered how to update the map. They couldn't very well let their kids go to Hogwarts without the thing; it was almost a tradition now. At least, they were trying to make it one.
Once the professors had left, Draco dug around under a desk and pulled out a box of stuffed messenger owls. He placed it on the training mat in the middle of the room and then handed James a roll of parchment with a list of names on it.
'You know how these things work?' Draco assumed and when James nodded he motioned to the list. 'I need you to send one to everyone on that list.'
The girls nodded and moved to the mat and the box of owls. The spells on them should still be active and that was all that was needed to send them. They wouldn't need to attach a message just yet. Sending the owls would be enough to put people on alert. The rest would come when they heard back from their contacts.
The morning slipped away from him. Activating the maps of Britain was easy enough but reactivating the charms that tracked the members was trickier, it relied on a combination of blood magic and charm work that wasn't exactly Draco's strong suit. It wasn't exactly any of their strong points but it beat sitting in his office all day staring at the wall and pretending the hospital actually needed him to function effectively.
He activated his own charm last before turning to the girls. He'd debated the wisdom of including them but he knew that they were a part of this trouble whether or not they were being allowed to dream about it. As predicted, the girls jumped at the chance to have their own coloured dot on the map. Just as he'd expected, they didn't even flinch when he used a knife to slice a shallow cut into their arms. He didn't react when the cuts started to heal before his eyes. The girls healed even faster than their parents, that was for sure.
'Can we eat lunch in the Great Hall?' Alex asked when they'd sent off the last of their owls.
Draco shook his head. 'I'm not going to spoil the experience for you. Pick somewhere else and we'll go there. I could use a break from this room, I honestly never thought I'd be spending this much time here again.'
The idea of lunch required serious consideration and when you were magical beings that realistically could only be called part witch, there were a lot more places open to you when you could simply flame wherever you wanted. Eventually, the girls came to a decision and held out their hands to him.
'Where are we going, then?' he asked warily. He wanted to know where they were going before he arrived their blind, it gave him the illusion of being in control.
'When we were little Grandma lived in a village and not in the city. We want to go to the café she used to take us to.'
Their suggestion seemed perfectly harmless and so, really, he should have known the trip would turn out to be anything but.
The little café actually had a nice view of the village square (the heritage listed part that was filled with tourists and not the take-aways and chain stores that dominated the rest of the village). They managed to snag a table outside without having to resort to magic and they settled in for an enjoyable meal. Although he may never have been a huge fan of Harry when they were growing up, he'd come to view the man as a trusted friend in the years since Voldemort fell. He enjoyed the chance to spend an afternoon with Alex and James – he felt like an uncle out with his nieces for the day.
James was giving them a very detailed retelling of a project she'd done for her muggle school (lunch all but forgotten as she enthusiastically used her hands to emphasise her tale) when the hairs on the back of Draco's neck prickled and the ends of Alex's hair started to smoulder. James broke off mid word and turned to look over her shoulder behind him. He truly hoped he was the only one noticing the way her sleeves started to smoke.
Cautiously he turned in his seat tyring to spot whatever it was that had caused his nerves to tingle and the girls to start burning up. He half expected to see a dragon or some dark creature looming down on them, actually found himself liking the idea, but there weren't any muggles running in terror and he didn't hear any screams. In fact, the whole square seemed so perfectly normal that it took him longer than it probably should have to spot the young woman standing on the corner near the statue commemorating one war or another.
The woman wouldn't have looked out of place at a university or down at the pub. She had long brown hair that was braided down her back, leggings and an oversized t-shirt that reached down to her knees. It looked like a man's shirt and it bore the words Weird Sisters in bold letters. She was wearing red dragon hide boots. And she was just standing there staring up at the sky.
Alex made a motion that might have been a move intended to launch herself toward the woman but Draco placed a restraining hand on her arm. 'No,' he told the girls quietly. 'For now we just watch.'
As he understood it, the weird man they were tracking had done nothing more than stand and stare at the sky until he'd noticed he was being watched by witches. From what they could tell it had actually been the realisation that the nice young girls talking to him could wield magic that had put him on the offensive. He wouldn't risk creating a scene with the girls there.
Besides, there wasn't really anything about the woman that proved she was like the man they'd already encountered. In fact if it wasn't for the way Alex had reacted he'd have written it off as a strange coincidence. But there weren't really coincidences in his world and as much as he'd like to think it could be a weird chance encounter and completely unrelated, he knew he couldn't take that chance. They needed all the information they could get if the man came back.
So for eleven minutes and forty-two seconds they simply sat and watched her. She didn't seem to be aware of anyone or anything around her and when she was done looking up at the sky she simply turned and walked away.
'Should we follow her?' James asked.
Draco hesitated. If he were alone he would have followed her in a heartbeat but he wasn't alone and he wouldn't risk the Potter girls, not for something so completely unknown. But the girls weren't Artemis; they weren't nearly as innocent or as powerless as they looked. Yes, they were still very young but Harry had only been eleven when he faced Voldemort for the first time and he'd been a perfectly ordinary wizard at the time.
Mind made up, Draco threw some muggle money onto the table and stood. 'The moment it looks like trouble you flame and find your mum or dad,' he ordered sharply.
They both nodded and he spared a moment to approve of their serious expressions. Whether it was the dreams they'd been having or some lesson that their parents had given them, both girls seemed to understand that this was serious, that it wasn't some silly game.
Knowing he would probably come to regret the decision (and really wishing he could bring himself to just send them on home), Draco said, 'Well, come on then,' and took off after the woman.