Chapter Fifty-Eight: In Which A Lot Hits the Fan

"Never thought I would hope as I count the miles, through the wind and the rain I could see you smile. There 'ent no turning back, I can see you in the distance, touch you through the night, driving into the light. When you're on your own, when you're all alone, won't you meet me halfway?"
                  -Justin Hayward/John Lodge, 'The Present,' 1983.

"I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life…"

"What now?"

"Professor Trelawney told Lucy her chart was perfect. She's going to annoy me into the ninth circle of hell come lunch."

"Really? I've just been making my assignments up."

"Honestly, Tim? Wow, I would have never known," Hannah remarked sarcastically. "Bitchy old fraud wouldn't know Divination from cheap romance novels."

"Hey! How did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That's where Tom an' me got the idea for our latest tragic deaths."

"Which are?"

"Consumption."

"Tim, you are aware that consumption's been controlled since the nineteen-seventies?"

"Really? How depressing. I really need a good grade from the dragonfly."

"You call her that as well?"

"Sure, and why not? She looks like one."

"Whose cheap romance novels are you borrowing?"

"Tom got ahold of one of Lucy's, of course."

"Oh, that tripe. Julie and Mitchie had several really funny ones…the Muggle kind, you know, and every time there was a blank page, the Yank illustrated it…you can't read those, though."

"Why not? Don't want me getting ideas?"

"No…don't want you speaking French at me and writing bad poetry."

"All bad poetry comes from great inspiration."

"Or great indigestion."

"Besides, doesn't Aldous kind of hold the patent on French and bad poetry?"

"Speaking of Mr. Howard," Professor Snape interjected, coming around the corner directly into the little discussion. "I am under the impression that he has not been seen for the past three weeks."

"Oh, yes, Professor…didn't he have to go home because his aunt was sick?" Hannah lied glibly.

"He might well have, Miss Stern, if not for the fact that his parents are both only children. Care to enlighten me as to where he really is?"

"Well, sir," Tim stammered, "I haven't seen him since the dance…he gave Chloe a kitten, though, she was carrying it."

"A black cat?"

"Yes, darling little furry one," Hannah recalled.

"Damn."

"Is anything wrong, Professor?"

"No, nothing beyond the normal realms of teenage predictability. I suggest you both return to your Common Room and study for tomorrow's test. Good evening."

And with that, the professor was gone in a flurry of black robes like some overgrown bat.

"I seriously wonder just how much 'Fessor Granger's calmed him down over the years," Hannah queried.

"According to my dad an' Uncle George, he used to be seven times as bad. Which of course begs the question, how did she stand to get near him to calm him down?"

"D'you suppose it's just one of those preordained fate-y kind of things, where two people are just meant to wind up together no matter what a thorn the other person is?"

"I s'pect so…wonder if that's how Tom puts up with Lucy's Divination fix."

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"Mew," Pierre the cat observed, pawing at Malfoy's shoe. Draco picked the little creature up and scratched him behind the ears. "Mew."

"Chloe, come get your cat."

"Mew."

"He sounds nervous," Draco observed, handing the little creature to its mistress.

"Would he look nice sitting on your lap, Julie? Dark Ladies do often keep black cats." Chloe placed Pierre neatly on her friend's lap, at which placement he mewed again.

"Is he supposed to make that noise?" Julie asked, tensing a little in the Titania-like pose she had chosen for her throne, lazily stretched across it in a lounging and oddly indelicate way, because of the cat now perched unceremoniously on her gut.

"Yes."

"But so often?" Malfoy asked.

"Usually. He is just a little cat." The French girl bent and whispered something in French to the half-grown feline. "Be good." She then excused herself to go get something she had forgotten, leaving the 'Dark Lady' alone with her 'butler.'

"Come here, Draco," Julie commanded, more to practice than because she really felt imperious. He obeyed, and not realizing that they had been left with anything more than a furry chaperone, kissed her long and well on the lips. Her eyes widened in shock and she pulled away. "What?"

But it was too late.

Pierre leapt off of her lap as if he had been electrocuted and blurred into the form of Aldous Howard, just as Chloe returned.

"Meow!" he interjected, then remembered himself and spoke in English. "What the fuck?"

"C'est le merde," Chloe observed with a sigh. "I should have warned you, dear."

"C'est le-a-hell-of-a-lot-more-than-merde, Chloe! She…he…they were just at it!" The Seeker and professor at least had the grace to blush. "You're a professor!"

"Oh, well spotted!" Julie remarked acidly.

"Don't do that!" the Chaser begged in abject horror.

"What?"

"Acting all know-it-all-y! He just snogged you and he's your professor!"

"I noticed, Aldous."

"Well, it would've been kind of hard for her to not," Chloe added.

"And you knew about this?" The first-year shrugged. "Chloe!"

"I think it's romantic," she defended with an innocent smile.

"You think everything's romantic! You're fucking French!"

"Got a problem with that?" she inquired, hands on her hips in a very indignant fashion.

"He's her professor! She's only like…Julie, how old are you?"

"Old enough to have decent taste in men," she replied a little snippily before kissing Malfoy again. Aldous covered his eyes as if seeing something being eaten alive.

"Gods!"

"Did we miss something?" Mitchie inquired brightly, entering with Jen, guitars slung over their shoulders and patch cords dragging. They had evidently just returned from a bit of practice. "Aldous! Hi!"

"Hey, Mitch," he greeted absently before turning accusingly to the Yank. "Did you know about this?" he asked, gesturing frantically to Julie and Malfoy.

"About what?" Draco wiped a bit of lipstick off. "Oh, that? Sure."

Jen went about as white as Aldous.

"Let me guess, you think it's romantic, too, nevermind he's old enough to be her dad!"

"No, I just want her busy to keep Donaghan to myself," the American snapped sarcastically. "Of course it's romantic! They're entirely cute together!"

"Julie, you're…?" Jen asked, unable to pronounce the inevitable. Her friend nodded sheepishly.

"I would have told you…it just never came up."

Jen's first instinct was to run away so the others wouldn't see her reaction, but she knew Julie would be certain to follow, so she did not. She felt absolutely betrayed, and oddly not even by her friend, but by her own stupidity.

"How long has this been going on?"

"Since before Christmas…Halloween, actually," Malfoy admitted.

So she really had never had a chance. Jen swallowed hard and called up her old skills learned as a child of Slytherin.

"I would never have known…you two must really like each other to go to all the effort of hiding it." The others saw a smile, but inside her heart was snapping into bits of matchwood. "I'm assuming your parents don't know, Julie?"

"Well…Mum sort of does…she knows I like him, that's all."

Draco and Aldous both looked absolutely gobsmacked at this.

"She knows?"

"Well, not every paltry detail down to the last tooth mark, obviously, seeing as you're still standing there in those damn dishy leather pants-"

"Merlin's arse on a pole, Julie! Knock it off!" Aldous protested.

"Knock what off?" she challenged, knowing that it was only by being belligerent and mildly salacious she could get away with this.

"Sounding like a- a…"

"Scarlet woman?" Ron supplied, wandering in with a big grin and a huge box of Muggle takeout. "I've noticed her metaphors tend to slide into the nether place as of late, but it's nothing compared the Yank –Aldous!"

"Yes, he's just appeared out of nowhere, isn't that clever?" Mitchie covered, stepping in front of the red-haired Auror not only to prevent Aldous's look of shock making him realize something he shouldn't, but also to pick up one of the soda cans. "I believe Chloe's cat was actually him…Julie's started up her scandalous-Dark-Lady shtick again."

"Oh, well, that's what this owl's about, actually…de Diablo's been unavoidably detained. You girls get another week before curtains-up."

"Really?" Julie inquired, descending from her throne in a manner unabashedly stolen from Muggle films. Drawing on the best supervamp training Narcissa Malfoy and Nicole Kidman flicks could provide, she sauntered over to Aldous and absently began to play with his hair as she covered for herself and the professor: "Poor Aldous is being treated appallingly…poor dear's stumbled right into our 'emergency rehearsal' and then been told entirely the wrong thing. Would you be a duck and tell him what's been going on, then?" she inquired of Uncle Ron.

The fact that Aldous was slightly taller than she was marred the effect of this seductress act only slightly, and Ron's ears had suddenly gone red as his hair.

"If you'll explain why you're frolicking around him like a bloody veela, Jules!"

"Was it really that good? I've been practicing," she remarked artlessly, shrugging toward Chloe as she caught the soda Mitch threw at her. Looking exactly like her old self, only oddly dressed, she tried to open the can, making instead a splintery noise, which was audible through the entire room. "Ow!"

"How many times do I 'ave to pound it into your 'ead, Julie! No opening cans with your nails!"

"Ow…"

"Oh, 'old still," the little first-year snapped, repairing the genuinely ridiculous nail with a quick spell. "If you could please attempt to be a lady instead of a –a Quidditch jock?"

"At least she's stopped ragging on me now, Jules," Mitchie observed, throwing down a fuzzy blanket for picnic dinner on the floor.

"I'm starting to think 'zat you are a lost cause."

"Damn straight," the American replied a bit sharply to her, circling very wolfishly around both Chloe and Aldous, getting right in their faces with a threatening look and a deviant's smile. "I'm uncouth. I'm untamed. I bite my nails and I don't wear eyeshadow. I've broken more rules than you'd care to hear. I could tell you stories that would make you both blush and cover your ears in offended shock. I keep secrets that people's lives hang upon." Here she cracked her thumbs and yawned in her odd way, her tongue stretching over her incisors like a dog's. "And considering how I'll be a very large, very predatory animal within the next two hours, I would suggest you not mess with me."

Oddly, nothing more was said about Julie and Draco in Uncle Ron's presence.

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Angus flapped his way over the forests and the lakes, finally coming to rest on another werewolf's outstretched arm. Tied to his foot was a sizeable roll of parchment.

Donaghan fed the owl a bit of his sandwich and set him on the bronze owl-perch near his desk. He unrolled the parchment, sniffing it deeply to recognize among the scents of charcoal and graphite and even ink the one smell he missed the most direly now. Carefully he separated the drawings and put them in the correct order with his carefully handwritten pages of history. Altogether with the latest twelve, this made for a grand total of 278 pages of text with 47 illustrations in color or black and white. He used the Binding Spell that Professor Granger had showed him that afternoon, and suddenly a fat, leather-bound textbook was in the stack of notes' place.

'Two Worlds, One Time; A Comprehensive History of Magic and Muggles,' read the title on the front. 'By Donaghan McPhersen, with illustrations by Michelle Isolde Tyler.' Gods, he missed her. He wondered inwardly what edition the book would be in when only one last name was required.

Suddenly, a knock interrupted these musings. Swiftly, picking up his book, Donaghan answered it, finding Professor Snape together with a nervous-looking gentleman.

"McPhersen, if you would be so kind as to join me in the Potions classroom?"

"Of course, per'fessor…is somethin' wrong?"

"Yes, actually. Aldous Howard has strayed to America with Chloe Delacour-Davies."

"I was after suspectin' he might'a done 'at," Donaghan remarked, pulling the door shut behind him as he walked off with the two older men. "I'm sorry ter' say I've been a bit distracted o'late."

"What with your extra-credit project, I don't blame you." Snape rounded a corner with the nervous man walking double-time to keep up. "Oh, have you two met?" he suddenly inquired, stopping at the door of his wife's classroom. "Mr. Granger, this is Donaghan McPhersen, Donaghan, this is Julie's grandfather." The two shook hands.

"Lovely ter' meet y', sir."

"Pleasure's mine."

With that taken care of to his satisfaction, Severus opened the door, revealing what must have at one point been a very amiable group of people, but was now a wreckage of sniffing females with teary eyes and two identically bushy-haired women trying to control things with Professor McGonagall. One of the sniffing ladies was clearly Aldous's mother, considering how much she and her husband resembled him, and the other could only be the fabulous Madame Delacour-Davies. They seemed to be crying for entirely different reasons.

"He could be killed, running off to another country in the midst of an Auror mission…" Mrs. Howard sniffed.

"And it ees so romantic!" Chloe's mother added, waving a handkerchief made more out of white lace than anything.

That did it. Donaghan, apart from trying not to laugh himself, knew full well Professor Granger and who could only be her mother were stifling it themselves. Professor McGonagall actually had to nudge Hermione in the ribs, all the while covering her own mouth as well.

"Ladies," an aristocratic, throaty voice announced. "I would suggest that you both calm down and permit the professors to explain the plan of correction to you."

It was, of course, Narcissa Malfoy. Something about her calm, collected manner made both mothers abruptly silent as a tomb. "Severus?" she inquired of the professor.

"The only way to retrieve Aldous is for someone to go and get him. With the present state of the American Aurory, his return alone would be exceedingly dangerous. What's more, delays have forced the Auror Office to reconsider the female students' and English Aurors' involvement. It is therefore illogical to consider sending someone to get him if the others will be soon called home as well. I am certain Misters Weasley and Malfoy will devise some proper and educational use for him, and since the staff has already prepared to send the females' homework out with a tutor, we can simply include work for him as well. His academics will not suffer, and all possible measures will be taken to ensure that he is every bit as safe as the girls are there. You can relax."

There was a silence as everyone considered this idea. Finally Mrs. Howard spoke, a bit harshly:

"At least he could have sent us a note to say where he was going."

From there matters seemed to be attended to, and the mothers began to chat idly about their children, telling Chloe-stories and little anecdotes about Aldous. They were pulling out the baby pictures and comparing when Professor McGonagall cleared her throat.

"If this is an alright plan of action by the two of you?"

"Oui, naturelment."

"Yes, of course."

"Good. Now that that's settled-"

"Aren't 'zhere some uzzer muzzers?" Fleur's mum inquired suddenly, looking around as if counting heads. The only people present apart from herself and Mr. Davies were the Howards, the Grangers, the Granger-Snapes, Professor McGonagall, Narcissa Malfoy, Donaghan, Judy Parkington, and Molly Weasley. "I thought 'zhere were four girls 'zhere."

"There are," Professor Granger clarified. "Two are ours, the one is yours, and the other-"

"Vos in Slytherin…I 'ave 'eard. 'Zat bastard Blodgett, 'e's not fit to-" Madame Delacour-Davies went abruptly into a long and melodious string of French with fascinatingly impassioned gestures, convulsing Mrs. Granger, Hermione, and Mr. Davies, and causing Snape and McGonagall to raise their eyebrows in surprise. Narcissa was stifling an absolute fit of mirth.

"French is such an –er, colorful language," Professor McGonagall remarked tactfully.

"I will say that I find her description incredibly apt," Severus chimed in.

"If we can dispense with Slytherin-bashing," Molly Weasley asked, "I'm sort of curious about who we're sending as a tutor."

'So that explains her presence,' Donaghan realized. Mrs. Weasley was there to keep the small group on-task, as was Mrs. Malfoy as the two grown Aurors' representatives. So amused was he by this clever design of Professors McGonagall and (he'd bet,) Granger, that he scarcely noticed Professor Snape placing a hand on his shoulder.

"I trust you all have heard of Master McPhersen's exploits on the Quidditch field?" the professor asked the others. They nodded, some more enthusiastically than others, with Mr. Davies grinning more brightly than ever. "Well, apart from having broken the record for Bludger-related injuries, he has elected to take his N.E.W.T.'s early. He has only mine to complete and will then for all intents and purposes no longer be considered a student –except as the Gryffindors' Chaser and Captain, of course." Snape nodded to his wife, who continued the explanation.

"What we're suggesting, is to send him as the girls' and Aldous' tutor, since he has made his intent to work in education known. Moreover, he's a very good friend of theirs, and I'm certain that if the girls have been hiding in the library and skipping meals as he has, we'd better get the lot back together before someone starves."

"You yourself have not considered going, 'Mione?" Fleur asked.

"I have Albus Julian to take care of, as does Severus. We've considered sending Judy here as well, but the American Aurory doesn't want her taking any unnecessary risks."

"Y-y' mean yeh want me ter' go ter' America?" Donaghan stuttered.

"Well, if you don't want to," Professor Snape remarked.

"Na! I'm bloody dyin' ter' see –them again…when d'we leave?"

"Do you feel up to your Defense Against the Dark Arts final tonight?"

"An' then I can leave?"

"In the morning, yes. Let me remind you, however, Donaghan," Snape reminded, using the Chaser's first name, "you are entering a mission against the very Dark Arts I've been training you against, with five of my present and two of my former students, not to mention Michelle and Julie. I would suggest studying."

"An' wha' d'yeh think I've been after doin' this whole month she- -they've been away?"

"The vaunted Gryffindor courage…" Snape observed with a sigh and a veiled look of pride. "Well, if that's settled, let's go get on with it."

Professor McGonagall was glaring slightly at Severus as he left with Donaghan, but the fairly luminous grin on the Scot's face seemed to cheer her up.

"You do realize, Minerva," Hermione reminded, "Donaghan fancies Mitchie."

"Yes, I know." The two female professors and a few of the others sighed sentimentally. "I do hope Severus doesn't kill him with the N.E.W.T."

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