Chapter Nine

Role Models

"Hey, there," he said, stopping with his face a breath from hers and smiling at her tenderly.

"Hey, yourself," she replied, tilting her head the barest inch and more perfectly exposing her lips.

When he kissed her, it felt like coming home. He'd only been here a few days, but any time without her was like being exiled. His contentment was probably visible from outer space, he thought while he led her away from the station to an Apparation platform. People watched them as they walked, he realized, jealous of the glow that seemed to surround them. Or possibly just jealous that he had such a graceful creature on his arm.

"I have to tell you what happened on Thursday," he said with a chuckle. "Crash is in trouble."

"Oh, no. Tell me he didn't do magic?" Vianne asked worriedly.

"Well, they say love is a magic all its own," he replied.

"Love?"

"The principal brought his daughter over for dinner. His lovely, eight-year-old, exceptionally strong-willed daughter. She has decreed that Sirius is her boyfriend, and they got caught kissing. Then Uncle Jamie got to explain what was so bad about that, just because Uncle Jamie might have chuckled. For a moment or two."

Vianne laughed musically, and then they were at the platform. Conversation halted while Draco focused on his destination and brought them to the front door of the house where the family was staying. Vianne was only here for today and tomorrow, she was going back on Sunday night. She was here so they could go over the final plans for the house before she started scheduling work to be done. Carpets and tapestries were going to be gone forever; they were tearing out a couple of walls to let some air and light into the interior of the house; an entire wing that was traditionally for extended relatives of the Malfoy heir was getting refurbished and redesigned as a place for Ran to bring his friends during the summers; the renovations on the cellar, including expanding it and improving the lighting, as well as adding shelves and cupboards, would turn it into Draco's workspace.

Finally, the bitter memories at Malfoy Manor were going to be stripped out and carried away, to make room for the new family he had in Vianne and Ran. Finally, it would be home.

Vianne was greeted happily inside by the kids and by Harry and Ginny, and they all sat down to have lunch together. Vianne didn't even mention Sirius and Cristina's indiscretions, but she did smile to herself every time she looked at the unruly-haired boy. It was so good to have her here, Draco couldn't get over it. He honestly hadn't expected being married to agree with him so well. Now he couldn't think of a single thing he'd ever heard of, magical, Muggle, or otherwise, as incredible and amazing as loving his wife and knowing she loved him back. He wondered, sometimes, if his parents had felt this way about each other at one time. His father had been such a cold man, but maybe, just maybe, he had felt this leap of his stomach when he looked at Narcissa.

"I didn't know what kind of flooring you wanted in the cellar," Vianne said, looking up from her notepad where she'd been scratching out and rewriting all the details they'd been going over. "I assumed you would want concrete, but I thought I'd better ask."

Draco nodded, playing with a strand of her hair and feeling the beginnings of a headache. They'd been at it for two hours. "Yes. But do make sure they triple the insulation in the walls, or I'll freeze down there."

"Don't you want a fireplace installed?"

"Yes, but I want to do the insulation anyway. It'll keep things quiet, for one thing. For another, I ordered the stuff that has protective charms built into it . . . just in case."

Vianne didn't really like to be reminded that he liked to play with things that could blow up if he wasn't careful. She frowned. He kissed her softly on the cheek.

"You look so much more beautiful when you smile. Not that you don't look beautiful all the time."

She obliged him with a smile and a quick kiss in return, then pulled out a handful of thin wood samples.

"You still haven't picked out the material you want for the shelving down there."

"Oh, sorry, I thought I left a note for you on my desk."

"You might have," she said wryly, "but I'd never find it."

"It's possible that I should have straightened it up."

"Oh, it's possible, all right," she chuckled. "Most of it looks like your investments, but I swear I saw a stack of Ran's essays from second year."

"I thought you might want them. Don't mothers keep that kind of junk?"

"They do," she said, sounding surprised. "I didn't know it was for me. That's very thoughtful of you."

"I can see I'm not thoughtful very often."

"You're always thoughtful," she said with assurance. "I just don't expect you to think of things like that."

"Would you believe me if I told you I sat around trying to think up ways to make you happy?"

"Yes."

"Good," he murmured.

They were quite happily taking a break from their plans when they were interrupted by Harry.

"Hey, I just talked— oh! Sorry."

"That's all right," Draco said grumpily as he extracted his lips from his wife's mouth, his words catching Harry as he was turning around to retreat. Harry turned back with his face red. "What is it?"

"I was talking to Matt about Doug and Morgan, and I wondered if you had talked to those two yourself."

Draco frowned. "Why? Is something wrong?"

"Oh, honey, I forgot to tell you," Vianne said in dismay. "God, I knew I was forgetting something really important." There were tears in her eyes. "Using the Floo Network always does that to me."

"It's okay," Draco assured her, cupping her face with his hand. "What's going on?"

"I needed to ask you if you minded Douglas and Morgan coming to stay at the house for a little while, maybe a few weeks."

"Is there something wrong with their houses?"

"Just with the fact that they don't really want to be in them right now," Harry spoke up. "Matt told me they just came out to their folks."

"Who went through the roof," Draco guessed. He sighed unhappily. "Well, at least they finally said something. It's been what, almost three years?"

"You'd know better than I would. Anyway, I guess they asked Quentin first, but Dan's not thrilled with the idea, especially since Quentin still has those episodes. Matt says they called Ran up right after that. They forgot he was going to be living in your house now."

"They seemed to think you would be thrilled to have them," Vianne added. "Which, other than the fact that they're two of your favourite students, doesn't make any sense," she said, rolling her eyes. The beloved antics of Doug and Morgan were fairly well-known to all by now. They were about to start their seventh year, after all.

"It's fine with me," Draco said. "As long as you don't feel like they're going to be getting in the way. I don't want you to feel like you're running a shelter for homeless boys."

Vianne just smiled. "Well, I won't say they don't still require some supervision, but they're not really children. Matt's the youngest and he's turning fourteen. They can entertain themselves just fine, and they won't bother me at all."

"Just remember: the cellar isn't terribly important in the scheme of things, so it's available to lock troublemakers up in for as long as you need it."

There was a flash of something in Harry's eyes, a sudden constriction in his breathing, that he tried to hide but Draco noticed anyway.

"Oh, shit, Harry, I'm sorry."

There was more than one reason to convert that room into a workspace rather than leave it alone. In fact, Draco sort of wished Harry would be there when they tore the cellar apart. He and his friends had been locked in that cellar once, during the war.

"Sometimes I forget just how many bad memories are in that house. I forget they're not all mine."

Harry gave him a tight smile. "Just most of them. Sorry, I didn't mean to overreact—or interrupt. I'll let you two get back to your . . . planning."

Draco's spirits were obviously dampened, so Vianne tentatively changed the subject back to the boys.

"I haven't said yes yet, but I didn't think you'd mind."

"No, I don't. I'm glad they seem to know they're welcome."

"You've been very kind to them."

"Somebody ought to be."

"But it's always you," she said with a tender smile. "I really love you."

"And I really love the idea that this house is going to be truly ours, soon. Let's get back to draperies."

Peter asked a billion questions about magical education over dinner, wanting to know how many families chose private education, how many sent their kids out of the country, where the primary schools for child wizards were, and many more. He was taking notes on some of it, which sort of disturbed Draco. Was the education system really so bad here? Was that why they didn't have the first clue who this wizard in their area might be?

In the end, Vianne was the one who asked the question that had been burning in Draco's mind all evening.

"But don't you have schools for wizards here, Peter?" She did not know his last name. That was still knowledge only Harry and Draco were privy to, or she probably would have been calling him Mr. Putnam. His wife was entirely proper.

"We do, but they're not like yours," Peter said, frowning over his notes. "I mean, the schools we do have resemble your Hogwarts, yes, but . . . there are simply too many people living in the margins. I experienced an education a lot like the one your sons are getting. But with so many Muggleborns, we have a hard time getting word out about the schools. We also have a hard time having enough schools. There are only three boarding schools currently in the United States, and I'm told the situation is similar in Canada. Private education is usually the only option, because wizards tend to avoid large cities here and so there are never enough of them in one place to merit a permanent school. It's expensive, though. So a lot of kids get a half-assed education and an admonishment to keep it quiet, and they basically either just forget they have magic and move on with their lives, or they become too big of a nuisance to ignore and get themselves arrested for breaching secrecy or for improper use of magic."

"Either too much or not enough, sounds like," Draco offered.

"Damned if you do and damned if you don't, more like," Peter muttered. "We have a public school, though. It's a university."

"Really? For what age group?"

"For the university age group," Peter said as though it should be obvious. "Eighteen to twenty-something. The program is only two years, but we accept from the age of eighteen onward."

"We?"

"I taught there for a bit. Still go back as a guest speaker once in a while."

"What's the program?"

"It's a teaching program. The university is specifically designed to train private tutors. Ideally, after two years, you will be equipped to teach children between the ages of ten and fourteen, or fifteen to eighteen, depending on which certification you chose."

"And these are the only people certified for private tutoring?" Harry asked, his eyes lighting up. They might be able to track down some information after all.

"No," Peter said, and Harry wilted. "Anyone can hire their old family friend to be a private tutor. The university just provides a standard curriculum and recommends its students for a governmentally funded tutoring position. What the government does is pay for these trained teachers to seek out young wizards without connections to the magical world. It's a very hard job. It can take the first year or two just to find a student, and the next several months just convincing them of what they are and convincing their parents to accept them as a teacher. The benefit is that the university students bring these families into contact with the magical world and get them involved in it."

"I get it," Ginny spoke up. "The more of these publicly educated tutors you have, the more closely knit magical America becomes. These tutors are the role models for magic here."

"Exactly right," Peter said, flashing her one of his rare smiles. "It's a good program, in one sense, but in another, it's horribly flawed. Can you see the problem?"

Ginny frowned, but Draco caught it.

"No regulation once the teachers leave the school. They can go through the program to get the certification, show a government badge to say who they work for, then they can teach horrible things to unsuspecting kids. So it's just as likely you'll have a bad role model as a good one."

"That's a great deal of the problem, yes. But it would be easy enough to track down tutors who work for the government. The real problem is the people who get the university training then never go on to sign up for the government job. They learn how to teach, often improving their own very limited education in magic, then disappear. We don't know what they're doing."

They all looked at each other carefully. It was Vianne who spoke.

"That's who is doing this, isn't it?" She looked at Peter with fear in her eyes, and Draco saw her start wringing her hands under the table. "It's someone who went through your system."

"Merlin . . ." Harry muttered. "That's how they're getting it into the high school. One of the students is a wizard. They're being instructed by one of these—" he waved his hand, "rogue tutors."

Peter looked stunned. "Shit. Holy shit. You're right." He jumped to his feet and started to run from the room.

"Where are you going?" Harry called out.

"I gotta go to the state department. I need to get my buddy in the records room to get a list of recent program graduates who didn't opt for government work."

"What should we do?" Harry asked.

"Teach. Talk to the students. Try to find the wizard. Or witch, I suppose," Peter added, with a glance at the two wives who were raising their eyebrows at each other with disgruntled looks.

"Don't worry, Sunshine, I know you're plenty crazy and devious enough for something like this," Harry grinned at Ginny.

She scowled. "That's not the point. This chauvinistic idea that wizards are—"

"Sunshine, you can't possibly think I'm a chauvinist."

"Oh god," Draco moaned. He looked at Vianne with intensity. "I love you."

Vianne gave him a cold look. "Just because I'm content to let you take the lead doesn't mean I don't have the ability to do so."

"I'm well aware of that," Draco assured her. "You managed to raise a werewolf just fine without me for twelve years, didn't you?"

Vianne looked mollified. Harry and Ginny were already through with the argument and pinching each other and laughing.

"I love this family," Draco declared grandly. "We're sitting on what could be a huge problem, and here we are—" He broke off with an extremely undignified and unmasculine squeal when Vianne pinched him. "I'm serious. This is much better than not eating and sleeping, like I used to do."

He was looking so deeply at Vianne that he didn't notice Harry doing the same thing with Ginny.

"Believe me, we know how strong you are," Draco said softly. "You make us better, and that's not easy."