Chapter Fifteen: Family History
"Wha- where am I?" Groggily, Julie struggled to make the room stop spinning as she squinted and watched white figures swirl around. At her side was a familiar warmth, and her left hand was stretched out away from her. The warm presence brushed some errant hairs away from her face, gently tucking the bangs she had grown out behind her ears for her. "Wh- -what you are whom?" She was only waking up and far from lucid yet.
"Are you alright, Julie?"
"Sure, yeah, where the hell's this?"
"You're in the hospital."
"Why?"
"You passed out in Diagon Alley, you've been here four days."
"Four days?" Suddenly Julie was wide-awake. "But the Quidditch game! Who's going to…what are you doing here?" It was Malfoy.
"For days, not four days. Six."
"Oh, tripe."
"The game's been put off indefinitely, though, the Hufflepuffs didn't want to play with the Gryffindor Seeker gone."
"Tha' was nice of them," Julie observed almost drunkenly. "'Scept you're a Seeker, why didn' you jus' play the game then?"
"Uh…Julie, are you alright? I'm a teacher and my house was Slytherin."
"I figured you would be a Slytherin…jus' logical. Are leather coats hot in California much?"
She had absolutely no idea who she was talking to, Draco realized, probably confusing him with someone he didn't know at all. Actually, she had been like this for days, wandering in and out of consciousness confusedly. It wasn't the first time she'd asked him something entirely ridiculous.
"Julie, it's Malfoy. Do you recognize me?"
"Sort of, yeah." Her eyes cleared a little and she looked at him. "Was the snake offended?"
"I don't know. She seemed alright." It was very odd that Julie should be worried what his new pet thought of her passing out suddenly.
"That's good. I know I get very worried when somebody passes out."
"Your parents –and I- were really terrified."
"I was afraid of that. Where are they?"
"Bed. Your dad tried to stay up the first five days straight, and when your mum finally told him to get to bed, I made her go, too. They're both okay."
"So where are-"
"In their room at the Leaky Cauldron. It's only a couple blocks away and they can Apparate. Do you want me to get them?"
"Naw, that's quite alright. They need to sleep," Julie yawned. "Aren't you tired, too? It must be close to ten, now."
"Ten in the morning. Does your scar hurt?"
"Which?"
"On your left hand."
"Oh, that one. No, it feels quite nice and normal."
"You hungry?"
"Naw."
"You tired?"
"Just a little bit." She was yawning almost every several syllables.
"Then try to sleep."
Julie watched as Malfoy, still beside her, stretched out in a chair. Because of his height, it didn't suit well, and he looked stiff. "You don't know how tempted I am to join you there."
"You don't know how tempted I am to kiss you once you get in here."
Malfoy stared at her, unable to believe his ears at what she had said. Julie was still looking at him, almost jokingly, and at the same time deadly serious.
"Are you okay?"
"I've told you twice, Malfoy; yes, I'm fine."
"But you just said-"
"I know I did. Are you still tired?"
"Yes, but you just-"
"I'm thoroughly aware of what I said, keenly aware of what happened with my scar, profoundly aware of what it probably means, and damned if I'm going to be the reincarnation of damned bloody fucking Voldemort. I also think you are one of the most disturbingly enigmatic, frighteningly likeable, and generally attractive men I've ever known. So what is your bloody problem?"
Malfoy was stunned into silence. Not only had Julie returned entirely to complete lucidity and consciousness, she had used the most fascinating combined vocabulary of obscenities and adjectives he had ever been so fortunate as to encounter in three sentences. Julie was still looking expectantly at him when they both burst into laughter at the utter ridiculousness of everything.
"Are you serious?" Malfoy asked her, still laughing.
"Of cousre I'm serious, why does everybody always-"
Malfoy stopped her from finishing the sentence with one of the most serious kisses he'd ever given. Julie, surprised, couldn't even try to back away.
At length they stopped, and for a few tense moments Malfoy was certain that she liked him as much as he did her. But then Julie grinned and it was clear she'd meant the whole thing as experiment:
"You really do fancy a student, then, don't you?"
She had him. Draco was very tempted to deny what he was feeling, as nobody caught a Malfoy in a trap, ever. But he realized Julie would never admit the truth of what she felt unless he did first. For a moment it was a bet between Slytherins -who was stronger, Snapes or Malfoys?
The Snapes won.
"Yeah, I guess I sorta do."
Julie smiled and petted him on the head.
"Good to know, Professor. Good to know."
********************
"Julie?"
"Hey, Mum." Hermione ran to Julie's bedside, where she was sitting up playing one-handed solitaire.
"Are you okay, sweetie?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Where's Dad?"
"Right here." Severus nervously moved over, holding a large book.
"Okay, that's good. Do you guys know what's wrong with me yet?"
"Well…the mark on your hand is a curse scar as we had feared. Apparently the wand failure didn't stop at least part of whatever the curse was from working, and you're reacting sort of like Harry did."
"I thought as much. Was the snake part of it?"
"We don't know, dear." Severus looked quietly angry, and it wasn't at his daughter. "You haven't used that hand at all, have you?"
"Not yet, Malfoy wouldn't let me."
The silent figure in the corner made a sound of assent.
"Thank you for staying with her, Draco," Hermione told him, quite remarkably using his first name.
"D'mentionit." He moved to go, putting a hand briefly on Julie's shoulder as he went in an unspoken sign of affection that he was certain she'd never return. Damn her age, her height, the way she talked! If only she acted fifteen, maybe-"
"Uh, by the way, Malfoy?" Julie asked, making him stop and turn in the doorway. She had one chance to say this and she'd better do it right. "What you said earlier…I feel the same way completely."
Malfoy leaned against the doorjamb and smiled oddly.
"A Gryffindor agrees with me?" His eyes met Julie's and they both smiled. "I kind of suspected you felt that way."
Before Severus and Hermione could realize what the gazes meant, Malfoy ducked out of the room and away. Julie laughed lightly as he disappeared.
"Quidditch?" her father asked.
"Sort of."
"I figured as much," Hermione observed. "It's Quidditch that keeps your father from killing my two friends, must be Quidditch to make you tolerate Malfoy."
"Oh, I can tolerate him, Mum, you know I can." Julì¥Á7
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f dislike very moderately. In an ideal world he'd just kind of walk around at parties being handsome and when I didn't need him I could keep him in a cage."
That remark sent Snape over the edge. Hermione had already been giggling for quite some time, but the image of Malfoy on a hamster wheel was too much for her husband.
"It's a damn good thing you weren't that descriptive," he decided as Hermione struggled to regain her composure. "And you, Starcatcher, crushes on teachers are dead ends. It's all well and good to think them handsome, but they aren't at all good for a relationship."
"Yes, Daddy."
"And put that eyebrow down, you haven't the faintest clue how to use the thing."
Harry found the entire Granger-Snape family in a state of hysterical laughter as he entered the room with Ginny and the babies. Julie immediately brightened at the sight of her small honorary cousins, who were placed on the bed for her to talk to. The 'grown-ups' talked nondescriptively of what they had heard so far from the St. Mungo's doctors, while Julie pretended quite convincingly to not listen. After a few acid remarks in which it was made pointedly clear that Severus was overprotectively thinking the doctors inept gits for not finding out more sooner, plus a shrewd observation of this fact from Ginny, Julie turned full attention to the babies then. Aside from little Hermione's red hair and Lily's black, the green-eyed twin girls were almost identical. There were about four 'words' between them and a dreadful lot of cute sounds, and at seven-and-a-half months they could sit up quite well.
"So, how did you find flying, Lily?"
"Deh. Bbbrrrpth." The dark-haired twin blew a raspberry.
"I think so, too. How 'bout you, Hermione?"
Again, a similar reaction, but a sound from the toddler made Julie pause:
"Thpithhh…oo-lee?"
"Is that 'Julie'? Did you just say my name?" Little Hermione repeated the noise. "Oh, good girl, little coz!" Julie hugged the baby with her right arm, still not using her left because of the scar. Lily made the sound as well and touched Julie's cheek, also receiving a half-hug for her vocabulary.
"I was wondering when they'd do their new trick for you," Ginny observed, offering each baby a teething biscuit. "They've been saying a lot of words recently."
"Mum-mum!" Lily called, pointing to Ginny with the biscuit and looking at Julie.
"Da-ah!" baby Hermione told her next, indicating a proud Uncle Harry.
"Can you say 'wingardium leviosa' yet?" Julie asked them, only to be given a blank stare and a spit bubble. "Don't worry, you'll learn -good heavens!"
Another wandless spell had the little Potter twins floating a hand's width over the coverlet. Julie caught little Hermione close with her good hand while Ginny picked up Lily and then put her back. The babies were elated if anything, happily cooing and making little sounds as their honorary cousin nearly dropped dead from the shock of it. Ginny smiled and reassured Julie some.
"They've been getting levitated quite a lot lately. Ron thinks it's funny when they float by."
"I didn't mean to do that."
"Wandless spells again?" Hermione senior asked concernedly, holding her daughter's wand in her own hand behind her back.
"Yeah, I was afraid it'd scare the babies, Mum."
"How long have you been doing wandless spells?" Severus asked, eyeing the star on his daughter's left palm again.
"A few weeks…first it was just summoning my broom and then the seam-rip one, now the levitation you just saw with the baby girls."
"Seam-rip?"
"A 'Ravelus Stiticus' six days ago," Julie's mother clarified.
"What happened?"
"A disaster."
"That's putting it mildly." Julie was a little afraid of her mother's describing it. "It was very much a bad scenario, Daddy, and not one I would choose to bore you with the gory details of."
"Her and Malfoy's clothes fell to pieces in the dormitory."
"Well, that's not that- -what?!"
"Neither one of us saw anything innappropriate."
"That's not the point! It's –immoral!"
"And accidental! It's not like I stripped him naked to prance around for me."
"Now there's a gory detail," Ginny chipped in.
"Aren't you being just a little hypocritical about this?" Harry asked of Severus and Hermione.
"It's different!"
"I was seventeen!"
"And Sev was thirty-seven, Malfoy's thirty-three. They've actually got a better age difference than you two."
This observation delighted Julie considerably.
"Why, thank you, Aunt Ginny!"
"You shut your noise!" Severus barked. "I will not have you dating a teacher here."
"I wasn't going to, I just think Malfoy's sort of cute."
It hit Julie at that moment that it was the first time she'd told a lie to her parents. So she amended her statement rather playfully:
"True, I may like to date one sometime later, though."
"When Kenny Longbottom gets an 'A' on his Potions test," Severus challenged, to which Julie merely smiled and held out her hand.
"Deal."
"You've quite possibly guaranteed the boy tutoring, you realize that?" Harry tapped Sev's shoulder jokingly.
"He's as terrified of me as his father was."
"But you don't teach Potions now, don't you remember, dear?" Hermione gave her husband a nervous look.
Severus rolled his eyes heavenward and slapped his forehead in disgust at his bad memory.
"No changing the bet, Daddy, you know that."
"You're going to make him take you out just to tick me off."
"Probably, though it will be nice to see what it does to Matius Flint."
"Is he still bothering you?" Harry asked. Julie smiled 'no.'
"Actually, there's a note for you here from the Slytherin team," Hermione announced, offering Julie a bright green card.
"No undiluted bubotuber pus in this?" she asked cautiously, then opened the card with a nervous hand. It was quite normal for something writ by Slytherins, a series of odd little messages:
Dear Julie,
Hope your scar gets better.
-Alexei
Starcatcher,
Will they chop it off? We might win then.
-L. Grudgett, Chaser
Dear Miss Snape,
Hope you come back soon all in one Seeking piece.
-Matius Flint
There were four other little notes scribbled in as well, one seeming to be a picture of a hatching snake, and Julie was suitably amused by it.
"That's unusually civil. Who just poisoned them?"
"Here's the Gryffindors' one." Severus gave her the other, which was red.
"Why didn't they send it through Mum?"
"I don't know."
"The Slytherins probably didn't want your Dad to see."
The card from the Lions was more succinct:
Dear Julie,
We've decided not to play any tricks 'til you return.
"Good lord!"
We're just kidding.
-Tim and Tom, your older-cousin types
Dear Julie,
Don't die please. We have to play.
-Mack
Starcatcher,
Practice inside your mind. We need every extra second to beat Hufflepuff. Get better too and don't eat any Weasley treats.
-Aldous Howard, Chaser
Only-girl-here,
Don't forget me while you're there.
-Donaghan
Cherry-Nailer,
Bulstrode needed hitting twice.
-Kev Wood
P.S. We handled it decently.
At the bottom was a drawing of a Golden Snitch. Most of the notes were amusing, true, but Donaghan's made Julie feel a little strange. Going by the way his was off on the left side he had written last, probably to avoid the others seeing it. Did he still like her? This grew more confusing by the day.
And speaking of days, hadn't six passed since she last saw the Weasley boys? Her room was probably booby-trapped to the point of instability, and it was quite likely owls would pelt her the first day back. The cousins had a knack for sending hundred-piece puzzles in separate envelopes, a trick her father did not appreciate but found funny when it happened to Julie once. Chloe probably missed her quite terribly.
"When do I get to go back to school?"
"Tomorrow, according to the incompetents that work here." Severus gave the absent doctors a Snape sneer and shook his fist unobtrusively in disgust.
"I've brought a book I can read to you," Malfoy drawled, ambling in as if expected entirely. "Not sure the small Potters'll like it, though."
Lily and baby Hermione looked at him and gave him wide baby smiles. The aloof expression slowly melted into silliness as he wiggled his ears to the girls' delight. Julie was on the verge of hysterical laughter when Malfy turned to her with a completely straight face and asked what was funny, ears still twitching.
She forgot about Donaghan's note right then.
********************
"What book is it?"
"The Malfoy Family's history."
"Oh. Otherwise known as the Pureblood Guide to Snobbery."
Malfoy and Julie were alone as the Snapes got dinner. Draco shook his head.
"Nah, that's my mother's old etiquette manual."
"Do all wizard families have histories?"
"Any family with a female who has lots of time to write it down. My Great-great Aunt Mildred began the book."
"Was she funny?"
"Very much so, she wrote lovely jokes. A pity most of them have fallen out of context now. This is my Great-great-grandfather Draconius." Malfoy pointed out a picture.
"Are you named for him?"
"Sort of, yeah. He attempted to domesticate the Orc in an effort to procure a better gardener."
"Was he killed?"
"No, just smelled very bad after."
"I didn't even realize there were really Orcs."
"There are, just not a lot of them. They don't mate much."
"I've heard their mating habits are quite violent."
"My Great-great-grandmother would probably agree with you. We Malfoys tend to gather inspiration much."
"That isn't reassuring."
"I like rabbits more."
"Neither is that."
"How 'bout fairies?"
"Decidedly not."
"What animal do you think is fascinating?"
"Ferrets and white mice and dwarf dragons."
"Oh, snuggly ones."
"And just a little fire as well."
"Are you implying something, Starcatcher?"
"Are you, Malfoy?"
"Look, now that we both know that we…well, could we maybe set some boundaries or rules on things?"
"I don't believe in rules. They complicate creative things."
"It's only to keep us from getting too creative too fast."
"How creative are you?" Julie asked him almost nastily.
"I'm not sure how educated Muggles are, but this is one wizard with good ideas and time to spare for trying out."
For some reason, this simple declaration made Julie blush quite prettily.
"So do you want a list of boundaries that I make up?"
"No shagging. Is there anything you'd like to add?"
"Not really, but some things may come up later on. Are rules subject to addition or revision now?"
"Of course."
"I feel like the Geneva Convention here."
"The what?"
"It's a treaty that ended a Muggle war."
"Oh. Well, can I kiss you?"
"One more rule?"
"Yeah?"
"You don't have to ask."
A/N: Okay, does that satisfy everybody's need for reassurance and wizard-snogging? (The next Olympic sport, I think, that'd be nice.) Thank you for all the lovely reviews, it's what keeps me writing even as my fingers split and bleed. It should be a day at least before I get the next one up, as I've blistered my thumb beyond tolerance on my guitar strings. (Again.) Damn calluses refuse to stay on, y'know? So here I type in band-aids. Cheerio!