Twenty

In a feat of non-magical strength, James wouldn't let anyone else carry any of the grocery bags into the house from the car. Inside the house, Ann bossed Cassie about where to put everything, and ordered Tim to get their things sorted for a day at work. Every Friday the Granger Dental Surgery opened late in the morning, a luxury neutralized by her insistence that they arrive an hour early.

Even after the restoration of her memory, Ann had kept her strong convictions about young people's chastity, and it meant that Cassie and her slightly too polite boyfriend would not be allowed to spend the workday alone, unchaperoned in Ann's house. A Muggle-free day didn't suit Cassie's plans either, and she made no objections to the both of them being brought along to the surgery instead.

It was a familiar spot for her. Twice a year, her grandparents sat her in what her dad called their Azkaban Armchairs and cleaned her teeth with picks and water and a potion that was supposed to taste like raspberries but absolutely did not. During the ritual, her grandparents never said anything about how remarkably clean and healthy the children's teeth already were.

At the clinic, Cassie had a familiar list of tasks to do - cleaning glass surfaces with a spray bottle, using a noisy machine to suck dust out of the carpets beneath the waiting room chairs. The Grangers had a different list for James. To begin with, they dressed him in something they were calling PPE - a full length paper gown over his own clothes, purple rubber gloves, a mask hooked over his ears, covering his mouth and nose, and a pair of clear plastic goggles. If the Grangers had meant this getup to keep him from cuddling their granddaughter, it was working.

"What is this place again?" he asked, muffled behind his mask when Cassie found him in a janitorial room at the back of the clinic. He was lugging away a cardboard box lined with alarming red plastic, stamped with a symbol for biohazardous material which he did not recognize, but could have guessed at by now. "I know it's about teeth, but - I'm not even sure what I just saw out there."

Cassie lowered a pair of goggles over her own face, blinking at him from behind them.

"There was this tray full of metal hooks," he began. "Dozens of them, all different and tiny, but fierce looking. And there's wires and hoses, and water splashing everywhere, people laid out under bright lights with their mouths propped open, rubber clamped onto everything, and your grandad just sitting there, poking away, chatting about football."

"Yes, well he doesn't really care so much about football. It's just to help them relax."

"And the potions, Cassie - great spiky vials full of potions. I saw your Gran drive one right into the inside of someone's cheek."

"And they didn't complain at all, did they?"

James blinked himself. "No, actually."

"Yeah, she's brilliant."

"Look," he said, tearing his mask away so he could lower his voice. "What is this all about? It looks like some kind of gory blood magic. I know that can't be right, but since we've been here, I have seen quite a bit of blood. And, I do believe, at least one disembodied human tooth."

Cassie tucked his mask back over his ears. "It's not magic, it's healthcare. They're helping people care for their teeth, so they don't fall out, and they can keep eating and smiling their entire lives. It's lovely."

James was unconvinced.

"Maybe you'd feel better if you had a cleaning yourself," Cassie said. "I've had loads. So have Pollux and mum. And what about your dad? Everyone says he was raised by Muggles. He must have been to the dentist himself."

"Dad? No, he would never."

"I don't see how he could have avoided it. It's a childhood rite of passage."

"Rite? So it is…?"

"James, please," Gran Granger said, leaning through the doorway. "We're in a hurry to replace the suction traps. There's a sleeve of replacements on the shelf, just there. Bring them out, would you?"

"Cassie, help," he said, rifling through the shelves. "Help me. Have you heard what the suction traps are? What they do?"

"Of course. They strain all the spit that comes out of the patients' mouths, so nothing chunky gets into the lines to ruin the machines."

"Yeah, they're slimy, and foul, and smell like the bad breath of a hundred strangers."

Cassie folded her arms, smirking like the Malfoy he kept forgetting she was. "The talented James Potter, have you been bested by some Muggle dental equipment?"

"It's so gross, Cassie. Someone needs to come through and scourgify the whole place."

She took a step closer to him. "That's not how this world works."

He retreated. "Don't touch me, I'm probably coated in a fine mist of dried human saliva."

She kept advancing. "This will be my world soon. The trains weren't that bad, the grocery store wasn't that bad. Driving in the car is rather nice sometimes. But there's also all of this."

James was shaking his head. "There is no reason you can't keep cleaning your teeth the proper, magical way no matter what happens to you. I'll do it for you myself, every morning, every night, whenever you want."

She was standing close to him, her face turned up, baiting him to do what he had to in order to kiss her through his Personal Protective Equipment.

"Suction traps!" Gran's voice came calling.

"Right away!"

Harry Potter was extremely amused, wrapped in his invisibility cloak, stood in a corner of Granger Dental Surgery watching his typically over-confident teenaged son being cowed by Hermione's mother's list of chores. It may have been the first time Harry had been in a clinic like this without being scared of getting a needle in the mouth. The smells and sounds sent his memory back to the desolation of his childhood, the longsuffering ward of the Dursleys, bearing with the luxury of having his teeth cleaned.

He'd promised Draco Malfoy that even though he wouldn't gather up their children just yet, he would take the rest of the morning off to surveille them. If he wasn't so cross with James for getting involved in all of this without taking more care to not get caught by the press, he might have found the pair of them endearing.

The girl was a mix of the strangest physical features of both Hermione and Draco, and what was perhaps an even more surprising combination of their personality traits, complete with much more in her that Harry didn't recognize from either of her parents - and much less.

What could be wrong with her magic? He had heard it spoken of as if it were under-developed, faulty. How could that be true of Hermione's daughter or, for that matter, Malfoy's? Harry had known Malfoy's magic to be lazy or reluctant at times, but he had also known it to do astounding, dangerous things. What had gone wrong with their daughter? Most troubling of all, what he'd heard young Miss Malfoy say to James about the Muggle world becoming her world confirmed her parents' suspicions that she meant to sacrifice whatever magic she did have to restore Hermione's memory.

Harry understood, perhaps better than anyone, the compulsion to risk oneself to save people, especially loved ones - especially a lost mother. He understood it in Castora and in James as well. At first sight, he had wondered what James liked about this girl - what could drive him to risk so much to follow her here. Maybe it was rooted in this need to rescue. In his way, James had that need himself and no proper object to direct it toward. James wanted to fulfil someone's need, to be what someone else needed, or at least, to love and be loved by someone who might need him.

Still beneath his cloak, Harry disapparted from the surgery. James recognized the sound, spinning away from the disabled suction pump he was servicing to look around the room, nearly yanking the hose out of the machine as he did so.

"Right," said Gran, barely catching the end of the hose. "Cassie, take him to wash up and get him some lunch."

They sat in the park down the road from the surgery. Exhausted, James let himself fall down, spread out in a star-shape on the grass.

"Dad was there," he said, "at the surgery. He was cloaked and invisible, but he was there. He was careless and I heard him leave."

Cassie lay on her stomach in the short, dingy grass beside him. "Did he want you to know?"

James shaded his eyes with one arm. "Maybe." It was hitting him hard, all of a sudden, the too-few hours of sleep he'd had on the train.

Cassie's smoothed his eyebrow, her fingertips moving downward, over his eyelids, easing them closed. "Go on and sleep," she said.

"You'll watch over me?" he smiled from behind his closed eyes.

"I'll look at you, anyways. It'll be nice."

Her sweetness struck him and he opened his eyes to brush her hair out of her face. And just as he was dropping his hand away, something came hurtling toward them, hitting him in the chest. They sat up instantly, James looking around to see who'd tossed it at them, finding no one. It was today's edition of the Daily Prophet.

"There must've been a wizard here, just now," Cassie said. "Is it your dad again?"

James couldn't tell. "Maybe we should get out of the open."

They went to a cafe across the square, spending the Muggle money Grandad had been giving her to buy sandwiches and fizzy water. James opened the newspaper, flipping to the back for quidditch scores while Cassie yawned. He turned page three over without looking at it.

"Wait," Cassie said. "It's you."

"What?"

"There in the photo, it's you."

James winced. The paparazzi had an interest in him when he was a baby, the firstborn of the chosen one and all that, but they hadn't come for him in years. They still hadn't. The name Potter was nowhere in the article on the non-problem of Hogwarts truancy.

He still said, "I think this is bad, Cassie."

Her hand closed over his wrist. "No, James," she said. "It couldn't be more perfect."

Professor Longbottom had not only given Pollux Malfoy leave to go home early from school that day, he'd called him into his office and suggested it himself. The school was still in an uproar about what the students were calling James Potter's elopement and they were beginning to connect it to a student Neville felt particularly motivated to protect: Castora Malfoy. It was a rumor that was not going to blow over with Paul still fuming around the school.

In two weeks, he'd be old enough to take his apparation test, but until then, he had an excellent excuse for Griselda to leave early along with him. Hand in hand, they apparated into the back garden of the Malfoy's London flat. The backdoor opened at his touch and they were in the kitchen, faced with his parents sitting in the same chair, his mother in his father's lap, their foreheads pressed together, held in place by his mother's hand in the hair on the back of his father's head, his father's eyes closed as his mother murmured to him in a low, sweet voice. They looked, Paul thought, almost exactly as he and Gris must have when Professor Stuve found her comforting him in a Hogwarts stairwell, earlier that morning.

"Veela," Gris whispered beside him.

But it had never been more plain to Paul that making this kind of contact was something learned, and this was where he had learned it. Aside from the quick embrace in Malfoy Manor, he hadn't seen the two of them like this in months. And for the first time, it made him feel something other than repulsion. He wasn't the little boy clambering over them, forcing himself into the middle. The sight of them made him happy - grateful as well, for teaching him to love like this. Maybe it wouldn't always be the best way to deal with every problem, but it worked for now. He loved them for it, but he wouldn't let them know.

"Hey," he said.

Hermione twitched, moving to stand, but Draco held her.

"You're back," Draco said. 'Good."

"Where's Cassie?" Paul demanded.

"With Gran," Hermione said, loosing herself and standing to greet Griselda.

"With Gran and James Potter?"

She nodded. "You've seen it."

"Everyone's seen it."

"Griselda," Hermione redirected, not ready for another foray into the news of the day so soon after getting Draco calmed down, "are you staying with us for the evening?"

"The headmaster wants her back," Paul said.

Gris waved her hand. "I'd rather stay, Madam Malfoy. Thank you." she said in the odd manners of the old families.

"Sure, what's the good of being the daughter of an old thug if she can't tell the headmaster to kiss off every once in awhile," Paul finished.

Draco smirked. "Griselda, your dad was forced into those baby Death Eater dark arts classes with us when we were kids. Do you know if he ever perfected a patronus?"

She nodded. "Yes, I think that's what his ghost-toad magic is supposed to be."

Draco nodded sharply. "Excellent. Let's bring him in."