A/N: Well, in completely unrelated news, my surgery's been put off for some complicated reason indefinitely! Freedom at last to just sit and write without the worry of whether or not the docs want to cut my hair. (Brain surgery, nothing. Haircut, disaster.) So as I sit here with my laptop in the dancing throes of ecstasy, I feel I must express again my thanks to all who review this. I realize that when a story gets this long, it is possible to get lost, so if you've any questions whatsoever, review and include them and I'll email you. By the way, I've started a new project with Aemos, basically a List of Potions and Ingredients. If you've got any good ones, send them on to us. Oh, and I've decided not to kill Wormtail off right away. (Apologies, Niamh!) I think he needs a long, slow demise.

Here you go.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

"Dad?" Julie asked as they walked up the hall toward the Potions room. "Why didn't you just let Wormtail die of that heart attack?"

"It wouldn't have been ethical or right, Julie. He deserves to be tried and sentenced properly."

"He almost killed Mum and you know it, Dad!"

"I also don't believe a heart attack would be a fair way for him to die."

"How can you want him to die humanely?"

"That's the thing, Julie, I don't. I think Wormtail deserves to be tried in the courts under Dumbledore, where not one wizard in England will speak willingly in his defense, and to be sentenced to what Albus will have done with him. Wormtail deserves that. I didn't say it was positive."

For a moment Julie's eyes remained brilliant red, and then they flickered and returned to cinnamon as she laughed and gave her Dad a hug.

"You didn't kill him yourself, Julie," he pointed out. "Given the shade your eyes had gone, I might have thought you would."

"I can't, Dad. I'm only si- fifteen years old! I wanted to, no question, but I just didn't think I could."

"So you aren't completely evil."

"I haven't learned a kill curse yet."

Severus looked at Julie for a second in petrified shock before he saw her smile and realized it had been just a joke.

"Seriously, Dad, I think I might have tried it if you and Mitchie hadn't been standing there."

"Well, I might have let him die if not for Hagrid and your mother, dear. There are some people who just annoy you by existing."

"How exactly did he kidnap Mum?"

Severus sighed heavily.

"She never remembered exactly, but we know he cut her arm when she tried to get away. Poppy saw the scar and figured she may have nearly bled to death. That may have something to do with her amnesia, but I'm not certain. When Malfoy finally found her ten months later, she was very ill. We didn't realize you had been born, of course, but she had also been malnourished and left in the cold. The bastard had her in the cellar of a ruined house somewhere in Godric's Hollow... you're not alone in wanting him dead, Julie."

The black-haired Seeker was shocked to the core by this announcement. Her father regained hs composure and opened the door to her Mum's classroom.

Sure enough, there was Professor Granger, neatly labeling bottles in that neat, even script of hers. As her Mum held up a bottle to stick the label on, Julie recognized the slight pinkish line corkscrewing up her right wrist. Now that she knew how it had been done, the sight made her want to eviscerate the rat.

Another thought entered into her mind as well. Malfoy had been the one to finally find her Mum. Was that partially why her father liked him so much? And given the stories her uncles told about Draco, it was quite likely that thus he had earned their civility, saving their best friend's life. Why hadn't he told her? That sly ferret! Julie smiled a bit.

"Hello, dear!" her mother greeted, looking up. "How was London?"

"Very snowy. Mitchie's gone wolf, now."

"Oh, that's good. I thought it was time she did. This is the first time I'd tried the variation on Wolfsbane Potion that makes her transform faster. How long'd it take?"

"I wasn't watching; she was chasing me up the stairs to Madam Pomfrey's."

"And she changed mid-run? That's wonderful!" Hermione picked up a sheaf of parchment and began to write notes about the potion frantically mid-conversation. "Wait, what the devil were going to the nurse's for?"

"Uncle Ron told us about the rat when we landed."

"She only looked at him and refused his servitude." Severus explained. "I set Mitchie to guard him, seemed like the right dog for it."

"Wolf, Daddy, she hates it when we call her 'dog.'"

"Bloody standoffish Yanks."

"Don't I know it?" Julie asked jokingly.

"So what-all did you three girls spend the day doing?"

"Well, we knocked around Dennon Street a little bit, ran into my old friend Jack Merridew after the library-"

"Why did I just know you would go to the library?" her father asked.

"All we did was read smut on the Internet," Julie remarked flippantly. "And after that-"

"Excuse me?" Snape asked, a little shocked by this. "How exactly would you find '-smut' if the Muggle libraries have controls on minors and what they can view?"

"You would be shocked at some of the things you can find on the Internet," Hermione explained. "Why, when I was a kid at home on holidays, I used to read the most bizarre stories set in like, J. R. R. Tolkien or Victor Hugo's books. People would just write them, some serious, some just for fun, and let me tell you, there were some filthy ones. I believe the most off-the-wall was a Frodo/Galadriel fic, dead impossible plot-wise, but so chock-full of explicit details and all-"

"Excuse me?" Severus asked, giving her a raised eyebrow right along with Julie.

"Frodo and Galadriel?" Julie asked. "I'm sorry, Mum, there's just a limit to believability."

"I was thinking the explicit details part. Why would you be reading such..."

"Curiosity. I managed to learn quite a few things I shouldn't have, remarkable that you're complaining, dear."

Julie covered her ears and began to hum. Severus, reddening fiercely, kissed his wife as if to put that thought away for a little while.

"Alright, it's safe. You can listen now."

Julie pulled her thumbs away from her ears and shook her head.

"Don't you hate it when one ear pops and the other doesn't? Nleah!" She made a rather unusual face, sticking out her tongue, then brightened and rubbed the ear in question. Hermione grinned at her.

"Sticking out your tongue did it?"

"Yeah."

"That's your eustacian tubes. Did you know that when a person transforms into a wolf, their eustacian tubes have to move about three inches higher over bone, and that's why they sometimes have headaches afterward?"

"Seriously?

"Yeah. That's why I've been slowly adding Whomping Willow bark, it's got the same effects as regular willow, but much stronger...rather like naproxen sodium compared to aspirin in the Muggle world."

"Lasts longer, too, doesn't it?" Severus asked. "I'm still working on a potion that counteracts the effects of Veritaserum; makes it almost impossible to tell the truth." He was obviously explaining this for Julie's benefit, as Hermione pulled a roll of parchment from her desk drawer and handed it to him.

"Here's that diagram of reactives you wanted, dear."

"Thank you, I didn't think you'd have it done for a week or so."

"Well, I had a little spare time, somebody assigned me the Weasley boys for detention and they labeled all the new ingredients from their mothers' shop for me." She was raising an eyebrow at Julie, knowing she had something to do with this. "And yes, I did count the vials when they were done, Severus."

"I'm amazed Draco didn't assign them to me this time."

"He knew you'd kill them, Dad. And I suggested Mum could use the help." Julie looked a little concernedly at her mother. "When are you going to go on, like, parent leave?"

"I see no need to. The baby won't even be born until June at least, so why miss any classes?"

"Well, stop lifting heavy items soon, and no more breathing potion fumes." Severus looked every bit as irrationally protective as his daughter was. "I would suggest a good Antirhinus charm to take care of the breathing part."

"And purposely stop up my nose all day? It would sound like a terrible cold, don't you think, Severus?"

"I just don't want anything to go wrong this time. God knows how it was with Julie all those years ago."

"I still don't recall a thing about that, Sev."

"I thought baby-having left some kind of marks or something," Julie said. "A few of my old roommates got pregnant, unfortunately."

"So you probably know more about it than I do, dear. Crimeny, even Ginny knows more about having kids than me."

"Sounds like perhaps we should go to the library, Mum."

"I wonder if you two know where it is," Severus joked. "Or does knowing half the contents by rote kind of make that irrelevant?" He patted Hermione's still normal stomach and spoke to Whoever encouragingly. "Don't worry, you'll probably get used to the reading, it's something we do often in this family."

"Can babies hear you, dear?"

"Not for another three months or so."

"I was an only child, I wouldn't know about this."

"My mother's friend had a baby when I was nine. Other than that, I know just about as much as Julie might."

"All I know about is morning sickness, mood swings, swelling feet and ankles, weird food cravings, feeling very inclined to yell at your poor roommate when she doesn't wait on you hand and foot, and babies tend to kick around the fourth month or so."

"Well, morning sickness and swollen ankles are a non-issue," Hermione said with some relief, gesturing to the multitude of potion cabinets. "I doubt if I'll be very temperamental, considering how gifted the house-elves are, and I don't imagine babies kick incredibly hard, you see."

"I thought you didn't like house-elves, Mum."

"No, it's the idea of their slavery that I don't like. I've figured out, though, that if you convince them that being able to read cookbooks will make their food taste better, they do learn to read fairly well quickly; and it's just as easy to make them accept clothes and aprons and things. There are a few in the castle who accept tips, finally, although I know for a fact Freddie just buys spices for his recipes. It's like Mitchie said, I might have been an American."

"Well, thank Merlin you weren't. I think the accent might have made you stick out a bit." Severus had taken a chair beside his wife and was sticking the labels on the bottles after she finished writing them. Julie had started cutting out more labels with pinking shears from the sheet of Parker's Super-Sticky, Never-Come-Off Parchment, so that a neat little assembly line had sort of formed.

"There's something I sort of don't get about Mitch, actually."

"Besides the whole inability to pronouce simple sentences without sounding like a broken violin?" Severus inquired sarcastically.

"No, it's the whole anti-patriotic thing. She doesn't really care whether or not de Diablo starts a war with America, just so long as she can live in Pittsburgh when she's eighteen without her foster folks. I thought Americans really liked their country a lot."

"Most of them really do. Before you were born, the Muggles were attacked by some others from the Middle East, and there was a fairly nasty war against the terrorists. Patriotism became very fashionable. But there are always people who like to buck the trends and ride against the norm. It's also very likely your friend is bitter about her experience in orphanages."

"I still love my country, though."

"Yes, but orphanages in England aren't as directly controlled by the government as they are in America. Mitchie probably had to put up with constrictive rules passed for what seemed like no reason at all to her, which is something Yanks find very hypocritical."

"Still, it's kind of weird the way she talks down their government. I mean, she's working for them, now, isn't she?"

"Actually, Mitchie was requested by Dumbledore. Her government has no idea she's being compensated the way she is, and if the wizarding President wasn't so close to Dumbledore, she probably wouldn't have gotten to come at all."

"Then you know she's being expatriated here 'til she turns eighteen?"

"We also know a lot of why she was chosen. The fact that the Tylers helped to round up Death Eaters has a little to do with it."

"Did you know her parents?"

"I met them once or twice."

"John and Cass went with me to catalogue the Riddle house –they were hilarious. After nightfall when they turned into wolves, they worked the way Muggle bloodhounds do, except that Muggle bloodhounds don't howl actual people songs."

Julie could barely imagine people funny enough for her father to call 'hilarious.'

"Does Mitchie know the Aurors here worked with them?"

"I haven't told her I knew them, if that's what you mean."

"That would be nice of you, dear," Hermione pointed out. "I'd wait until she's turned back into a person, though."

**********************************************************

"Hey, Mitchie," Donaghan said quietly, padding gently into the hospital wing. "Yehr fur matches your 'air, i' looks really nice."

"Thank you, dear. Look who professor Snape has me guarding." Mitchie put her paws up on the railing of the bed and growled at Wormtail a little bit.

"Mitchie!" Donaghan exclaimed at the obscenity.

"That's Peter Pettigrew, he almost killed Professor Granger."

"I heard about that. He also turned Professor Potter's parents over to Voldemort."

Mitchie lept up and growled at the rat-man again, this time baring her teeth and adding a couple barks.

"Hey, you," Madam Pomfrey chided. "Not so loud, you're going to scare the others here."

A little first-year was getting a scraped knee patched up. Donaghan padded over on his large wolf paws and sniffed at him. It was Kenny Longbottom.

"Nice...wolf," Kenny said, nervously reaching out to pat Donaghan. The seventh-year licked his hand and wagged his tail like a friendly dog. Mitchie, too, came over and put her head under Kenny's hand to be petted. "Good wolves," the little boy told them. "Look, they match."

"Yes, they do, don't they?" Madam Pomfrey agreed.

Donaghan and Mitchie looked at each other. Sure enough, both had reddish auburn fur, Mitchie's a little lighter than Donaghan's.

"Are they your pets, ma'am?" Kenny asked the nurse politely.

"No, these are some nice guard wolves here to watch over Peter Pettigrew. Professor Snape sent them."

"Why does Professor Snape want wolves to guard him? Is he a Dark wizard?"

"Yes, but these are friendly wolves. They only growl at Pettigrew because they know what he did and they don't like him."

"Uh, Madam Pomfrey?" Kenny asked. "Are they supposed to do that?"

Donaghan was kissing his girlfriend, but to humans it looked like they were licking each other's faces.

"Michelle! Donaghan!"

Reluctantly, the two werewolves drew apart, the big one looking guilty and the littler one with a somewhat ticked look at being interrupted so. Kenny suddenly began to laugh.

"So that's what Chloe found out about you, Donaghan! This is so cool! Who's your girlfriend –wait, aren't you dating Chloe's friend Mitchie?"

"It's short for Michelle," Mitchie explained, but to Kenny it sounded more like "whuff, sniff, arrr-oowl."

"It is Mitchie," Madam Pomfrey explained quite defeatedly.

"Whuff!"

"Kenny, I'd appreciate it if you'd keep this a secret, though. I'm sure Mitchie and Donaghan don't want everyone in school teasing them about being werewolves, you know."

"Of course, ma'am. Geez, I thought werewolves were mean, but you guys are just like Professor Hagrid's dog!"

"Arrrooo!"

"What I believe Mr. McPhersen is trying to say, Mr. Longbottom," Professor Snape observed as he entered the room, "is that werewolves now take the Wolfsbane Potion, which makes them about as harmless as a wizard in Animagus form."

"Arf!"

"Yes, it should taste awful, Miss Tyler, it's supposed to do that."

"Well, I'd better get back to my homework," Kenny said a little nervously. "Thanks, Madam Pomfrey...see you later, guys."

"Whuff!"

"Arrf!"

"I think that means good-night," Severus translated.

"Oh, thanks... see you later, Professor Snape."

"Good luck on the surprise test tomorrow, Kenny."

"Oh, yes! Thank you, sir!"

The wolves moved back to their places beside the evil Wormtail's bed. Snape smiled cynically and put down a large, shiny plate.

"Here. This is what Hagrid uses to feed Claw on holidays. Tell it what you want, and it will appear, just like the –er, people kind."

"Arr-ow!"

"Yes, you're very welcome. Thank you for watching him." Professor Snape hesitated a few moments, and then gave each student a brief scratch behind the ears. 'This could maybe be a little less bizarre,' he thought. "Minister Dumbledore's Aurors will be here to take him away in a few hours. Good evening."

When he had gone and Madam Pomfrey gotten back to work, Mitchie turned to Donaghan, giggling.

"Professor Snape just had to talk to wolves just now!"

"Did y' see the look on 'is face? Tha' were wonderful!"

"You've never been around another wolf before when you've transformed, have you?"

"Jes' Mr. Lupin, an' 'e's, well, a guy, y'know? I 'ad no idea y' were so lovely as a wolf." Donaghan kissed Mitchie again and she licked him back as well.

"We should really be doing our work, though, Don."

"Righ'."

Both wolves put their paws up on the bedrail and bared their teeth at Peter Pettigrew. He was asleep. They went back to the ground.

"Y'know, I'm not sure he really needs to be watched, y'know? Madam Pomfrey's here, he hasn't got a wand, and his wrists are cuffed."

"I'm thinkin' maybe this is Julie an' 'Fessor Snape's idea of matchmakin'."

"Naw, cause they knew we were already...Merlin's earlobes, she did introduce us, Don."

"Yeah, y're right! D'you suppose that's why y're here, Michelle?"

"No, Minister Dumbledore sent for me. Julie didn't know about it at all."

"Well, I was a'suspectin', considerin' how we'd broken up just awhile before y' came."

"Donaghan?" Mitchie asked quietly.

"Yeah, Michelle?"

"I don't want to pry or anything, but just how close did you and Julie get?"

"Well, we never-"

"I know that, I just meant...did you love her?"

Donaghan was silent for a few seconds.

"Y'know, I really think I thought I did for awhile, there. But after I found out she was datin' another guy, or said she was, i' occured to me she was better as a Quidditch friend an' a nice girl to study with. I were jus' hung up on somebody because I was so lonely."

"Said she was?"

"I know Julie'd never really-" Mitchie furrowed her lupine eyebrows and shook her head. "Then y' know who it is?"

"I can't tell you, Don. But she still seems to love you as a friend, y'know."

The Scotwolf sighed and then placed his paw on his girlfriend's, brightening considerably.

"Then I'm free to love y' as much as I want, then, aren't I?"

"Donaghan, don't talk that way, you don't know-"

"Hey, Mitchie, I'm startin' t' love y', isn' that a good thing an' all?"

"Wolves mate for life, okay? I'm not going to go rushing into something at sixteen with a guy I've known maybe a month."

"They do?"

"No, we do. You're a wolf, now, two nights a month. I know you aren't used to all the trappings yet, but this is who you're going to be for your whole life, y'know? It's not going to go away the minute Professor Granger cooks up a potion to take it all off!"

"I'm sorry, Mitch, I guess I'm jus' after still bein' used to the other way."

The girl wolf kissed her Scot on the cheek again.

"Look on the bright side, Donaghan. You can speak to dogs when you're in your wolf form, now, you can smell, hear, and taste better, your hands and feet become less sensitive to papercuts, and if you like you can work as a bloodhound Auror for your Ministry."

"Really? Is 'at what you're gonna do?"

"Not for the Ministry, dear, I'm American." She spat the last word out with a tooth-baring leer.

"I thought Minister Dumbledore had made you a British citizen."

"It's temporary by my own request. The minute I don't have to answer to foster folks, I'm going home to Pittsburgh to pick up where my parents left off, y'know?"

"See, I don't get y' there. Y' hate your country, but love y're town."

"City."

"Ah, well, city. It's unusual to think that way abou' y're home."

"Not where I come from. I've met people who pretend to be Canadian when they go abroad and yet insist on claiming Brooklyn as their hometown."

"Is that near Pittsburgh?"

"That's part of New York City. Say, would you like to come see Pittsburgh sometime?"

"Sure, Mitchie m'darlin'. What's i' like?"

That was about as intelligent a question as asking Julie what the Moody Blues had written. Mitchie began to describe the unusual three-rivers layout of her hometown, actually gesturing the image out with her paw.

"So where the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio meet, that's called the Golden Triangle, where Point Park is. Then here's the Cultural District, and the Strip District's here, and the two stadiums, and up here to the right is the old prison. It sort of looks like a little Hogwarts, 'scept the stones are more brown than gray and it's not that tall. Do you like rollercoasters?"

"What are they?" Donaghan inquired.

Had he announced that he didn't know what a book was, Mitchie could not have looked more shocked.

"Rollercoasters," she explained, "are the reason why wizards protect Muggles from being rounded up and eaten by trolls." An intense discussion followed as the American tried desperately to explain what a rollercoaster was and Donaghan said it sounded like the cars at Gringotts bank. Finally, Mitchie gave up and told him she'd show him a picture when they got back to Gryffindor Tower.

"They are after soundin' kinda fun, though, Mitch."

"I think you'll like them. The best one on earth is in Pittsburgh. And I'm not exaggerating! Even you Brits agree the Thunderbolt is the best!"

"Is i' fast, then?"

Mitchie looked totally disgusted by that question.

"Donaghan, does Wolfsbane Potion taste awful? Is Professor Snape sarcastic? Is Professor Hagrid tall?"

"I guess it is, then." He kissed her and they wound up rolling around like playful puppies for a while after.

Madam Pomfrey heard the sound and looked at them.

"Teenagers," she remarked exasperatedly.

********************************************************************

Nearly-Headless Nick accepted the mail from his ghostly translucent barn owl and noticed the fat envelope first of all. It bore the crest of the Podmores.

"Oh, well, my rejection letter's late this year," he mumbled.

His spectral eyes widened in shock when he opened it, however:

'Dear Sir Nicholas De Mimsy-Porpington,
It is with heartiest enthusiasm that I invite you to serve as Captain Referee in the annual Headless Hunt, upon review of excellent recommendation by the Hogwarts Gryffindor Quidditch team.
-Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore
P.S. Have you already got a white-and-black striped doublet?'

********************************************************************

"Please, Professor, I didn't mean any harm by it!" Jennifer Blodgett was protesting. Malfoy had her hung upside down magically in one of the unused classrooms in the dungeons. "Please!"

"Tomorrow morning, I want you to apologize to the people you wrote about."

"Yes, sir!"

"And if I ever catch you writing drivel like that again," the blond professor promised as he turned the student right-side-up and set her on her feet again, "I'll leave you up there until the spell wears off. Now get out!"

Jennifer sprinted out of the room and down the hall, past her twin and cousin as if the Devil were chasing her.

"Mr. Blodgett, you're next," Draco told Jeremy.

Lyfften Grudgett's cousins were twins and identical in almost every way except for their gender. Jen was the elder of the two by three minutes and resembled Draco's current girlfriend just a little too closely for comfort, so he had been relieved to find out her greatest fear was being hund upside down and dropped on the head. Jem looked a lot like his sister except with a firmer jaw and the beginnings of sideburns, and neither one of them had anything close to Julie's ascetic Snape nose or wild Granger hair. Still, torturing them was bothering Malfoy a little bit.

"Step over here, Jeremy." Draco indicated a patch of floor between two bookcases. Obediently the Slytherin stepped over and stood in the middle. "Do you know what this piece of tripe is about?" the professor asked, holding up a bit of parchment marked 'The Slytherin Times.'

"Jen and Lyff and I had to write a newspaper for Muggle Studies class."

"You don't even take Muggle Studies, Blodgett, and neither does Jen or Lyff. Besides, this is what the Muggles call a 'tabloid rag' and you would have failed the assignment abysmally."

Suddenly Jem found himself unable to move as the two bookcases began to slowly come toward each other. Unless Professor Malfoy stopped it, he'd be crushed like a nut.

"I'M SORRY, PROFESSOR!" the terrified boy shrieked, nearly bursting into tears at the idea of being crushed alive.

"Good. I suggest you apologize to everyone you wrote about and destroy every copy of this tripe you can lay hands upon. Get out of my sight!"

Blodgett gone, Draco called the slouching, malevolent Lyfften into the classroom next. His 'interrogation' was identical to his cousins', except that Grudgett's greatest fear was stepping on rusty nails. He actually went hysterical for a moment and needed to calm down.

Even so, Julie was very puzzled to meet Lyff Grudgett and have him almost groveling at her feet. She managed to accept his apology and send him on his merry way without letting on that she had even known about the Slytherins' newspaper, and then continued on her little quest to track down her Draco. Sure enough, he was closing and locking a vacant classroom when she found him a second or so later.

"Dare I even ask why Lyff Grudgett just apologized?"

"This was one of your father's old tricks on the Slytherins. He used to find out and keep track of everyone's greatest fears, and if ever we did something truly awful enough, he'd bring us in and basically scare us back onto the straight and narrow. That's how come I read '1984'."

With one of his most wonderfully knee-weakining grins, Draco pointed out the number '101' on the door of the unused classroom. Julie giggled, understanding the reference.

"So you took Grudgett down a couple pegs for me?"

"I took Grudgett, Blodgett and Blodgett down a few pegs for you."

"All three of them? Uncle Draco, you're such a dear!"

Malfoy's eyebrows went up in surprise at the way she had addressed him, but then realized little Lester Bulstrode was walking by. They had an elaborately faked conversation for a few minutes, then kissed briefly after the annoying first-year was out of earshot.

"Your room?"

"Definitely."

They scampered off.

***********************************************************************

Severus stacked the vials carefully into his wife's potion cabinet. Most of them were common Aging Potions, however there were a few Youth Potions included in the shipment. He noticed that there was a note included in the box the potions had come in.

'Dear Hermione,
Thought your cat could do with some Youth Potion. Timothy and Thomas have enjoyed petting him during detention and told us of his condition.
-Jaqueline and Marguerite'

Severus smiled. The Weasley twins' wives owned the best potion ingredient shop in Hogsmeade and they had always been considerate, friendly sorts. He had known their teacher at Beauxbatons, and knowing how annoying Andre Trouchard could be, he respected Marguerite and Jacquie St. Just-Weasley for even studying Potions at all. It seemed to be a tradition among European magical headmasters to hire the most intolerable faculty to teach Potions. Maybe that was how the magical world prevented people like Tom and Tim from spiking drinks on a daily basis with dangerous concoctions. He picked up two of the vials and the note to give to his wife in her office.

"Dear?" Hermione looked up and Sev gave her the note. She read it and grinned.

"That's nice of them. Do you want to put some in Crookshanks' dish?"

"Sure." Severus opened the vial and poured it into the cat dish by the bed where the orange creature was still napping. "Crookshanks, here's some potion," he told the cat, petting him in a most un-Professor Snape-like manner. The rheumatic old cat woke up and began to lick lazily at the bowl.

"Mrrreow," Crookshanks said a few seconds later, looking more chipper than he had in quite awhile. Hermione and Severus laughed as he lapped up the potion and bounded onto the desk like a younger cat.

"Why do you suppose Jaquie and Marguerite sent two bottles?" Hermione wondered, reading the neat label. "There's two seven-year doses in each of these."

"There's also four more out in your cabinet. Do you think maybe they intended..." Sev gestured at himself.

"Even if they did, smutty French pharmacologists, I wouldn't do that, dear." Hermione kissed Severus on the cheek and then again on the lips. "I like you very much just the way you are."

"But if people only live to be eighty now-?" Severus indicated her still-unshowing pregnancy.

"How old is Dumbledore? You're thinking like a Muggle, dear."

"Now that's something I've never been accused of yet."

The two professors succumbed to unabashed snogging behind Professor Granger's desk. Katie Macmillan, a Hufflepuff, arrived to ask a question about how Pumblerose dye would alter denim indigo, but noticed the activity within and fled unobtrusively.

That had happened fairly often since Hermione started teaching there.

*************************************************************************

"Why didn't you tell me you found my Mum, Draco?" Julie asked, leaning gently against her much-older boyfriend's chest.

"I don't know. You never asked me."

"That's not like you, though. According to most of the reports I've gotten, you're something of a showoffy Slytherin."

"According to some of the reports I've gotten, you're an obsessive defense neurotic with chameleon eyes and a severe allergy to strawberries."

"That's rubbish and you know it! I love strawberries!"

"But the obsessive defense bit, dear?"

"Merely a product of my conditioning."

"I want you to stop carrying a knife, Julie."

"Why? It's dead useful when I need to sharpen quills and stuff."

"I anticipated that." Draco pulled out a shiny, small object, about the dimensions of his thumb, but just a bit longer. "Use this for quills. The knife thing is dangerous."

Julie looked at the tiny penknife and opened it. The blade glowed slightly and shone like it was on fire.

"It's called an Illuslice. The blade is a magic one. Try to cut your finger." The blade went right through it like a ghost. "See? It'll only cut nonliving things."

"Thank you," Julie said quietly, and pulled out her knife. It was obviously a small modified kitchen one with a ring soldered on so she could twirl it as one would six-guns in old Western movies. Next came the switchblade with the asterisk etched on the blade with a pin, the short dagger she'd converted from a pear corer, and last of all a slightly chipped throwing knife.

"You had four of them?"

"There's one more. Accio!" Julie reached up and caught a rather bizarre-looking blade with a hook on the end of it. "Actually, this is a shrimp deveiner I sharpened. People find it rather intimidating knowing I could pull out some of their insides. You keep them. I haven't got any more."

Draco looked at the minor arsenal now laid out on his coffee table. Five blades from fifteen years of insecurity.

"You're really doing this?"

"Yep. Getting rid of my last orphanage fears, y'know."

"You know, in cultures where women are armed property, turning over their knives to a guy is a sign of totally trusting him."

"I know. Nadraks, right?" Julie kissed her Draco. "After all, I have been to a library once or twice."

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About an hour later, with Julie asleep on the couch with him, Draco realized just how seriously she meant this. If she wasn't Severus's daughter, he'd have stopped it then and there. A fifteen-year-old entirely trusted him. He had never been trusted entirely except by Severus and Dumbledore. Come to think of it, Draco wasn't even quite sure he should.

And yet, Julie's giving up her knives meant another thing. He had terrified three students defending her, and now she was giving up her old method of defense. In a chivalrous sense, Draco had become her champion. 'How did that happen?' he wondered. 'Shouldn't her dad take her knives away?'

And right then, the third thing occured to him. Severus wouldn't be there in America.

Malfoy had just become the Knight Protector of the Dark Lady.

But even better, he had been trusted by a girl he really could see himself loving.

Julie began to mumble a little aimlessly in her sleep. Amused, Draco listened hard and found most of it to be French phrases, a little Italian quoted verbatim from a Puccini opera, snatches of Shakespeare, pieces of Muggle rock lyrics... and an 'I love you,' buried in all the midst of this.

Draco froze, uncertain if she even meant what she had said. For one petrified moment he looked at the sleeping girl with black hair and one streak of it dazzling white.

And then, very quietly, so as not to wake her up, Draco whispered the same small sentence in her ear.

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