Chapter Sixty-Eight: Bed Rest
"This is the most ridiculous, half-cocked insane absurdity of an idea I have ever heard in my life!"
"Shall I fetch the leashes?" Mel asked of Severus under her breath. The professor smiled for a second before turning seriously to the indignantly complaining creature who seemed intent on forcible escape from Madam Pomfrey's domain.
"Cassandra, this is a common enough problem among bitten females who attempt to carry full-blooded werewolf offspring to term. If you would-"
"Attempt? Attempt? I've been doing a fairly decent job of this attempt so far, you…you male!"
"I knew she wouldn't like the idea," Hermione remarked absently.
"Like it or not, it's the only option you have until John gets back with some kind of cure for it." Severus took his disgruntled coworker by the shoulders and spoke in his best stern professor voice. "So choose, Cassandra. Is it bed rest and a healthy child, or gadding about Britain in that mad flying car of yours doing god-knows-what and possibly dying in addition to an almost certain miscarriage? Is that what you really want?"
Instead of getting snarky back, sullenly agreeing, or even arguing with Severus, Cass quite suddenly burst into tears –something she rarely if ever did. Severus Snape was decidedly startled by the reaction and even more startled by the sobbing, trembling creature who was presently hugging him.
"I'll do what she says, Sevvy. I'm sorry…I'm just so scared…"
"Hormonal much?" Mel observed. "That part of the symptoms, eh?" Madam Pomfrey nodded, trying not to laugh.
"I'm afraid so. It's rather an unusual situation for me, but not at all uncommon according to every reliable source on werewolves. Apparently one in three bitten-mother, full-blood fetus cases works out this way, but it's especially rough on her, considering that the baby has A positive blood and Cassandra's A negative. That by itself would be a good cause for a week or two of taking it easy."
"You're not ticked at me, eh, Michelle?" Cass inquired of her own navel before just as suddenly going ashen and looking more than a little bit paranoid. "Sevvy…she kicked. She answered. That isn't good. Who the hell am I pregnant with? What the sodwockets is going on?"
"Aaah, Rosemary's baby, now?" Mel sarcastically waved her hands. "For fuck's sake, Cassie. You're pregnant with a baby werewolf. What do you expect, a stinking textbook case? I'd be worried when you start producing litters at a time in the hall closet."
Hermione just as rapidly and hormonally cracked up. Mel spun around and stared as the recovered hostage tried her damnedest to stop laughing.
"I'm sorry…it's just…puppies…"
"Barking loonies, the mess of you." A thought suddenly struck the ex-hooker. "Oh, dear goddess…a hundred and one Dalmatians…"
"So explain it to me again?" Cass asked Madam Pomfrey. "It's called transfigurative sanguinide preeclampsia?"
"Transfigurative insanguinide preeclampsia. It has to do with what happens to your blood when you turn from human to wolf and back. At this point, the baby is changing also, but there are times, apparently, when the baby changes faster than you or before you do, and that causes effects similar to preeclampsia in ordinary pregnancy. If we can't find some way to synchronize the change for both of you more closely, there are going to be some serious side effects. Rest is the first and easiest step to take. By resting you can slow your metabolic processes, and that may be enough to get the transformations reasonably closer. If not, there are other options we can add to the treatment."
"And John's in America finding them?"
"Exactly."
"I rather wish he could've sent Smokey," Cass observed with a frown. "I miss him now."
"Cassie, John's been away for an hour," Mel looked at her watch. Severus looked first at her and then at Hermione.
"I can understand that."
"So I'm going to go and lay down and just read or sleep?" Cass's frown didn't fade at this. "Oh, well."
"I'll stay with you if you like," Hermione offered. She, too, was on a schedule of rest since her rescue. "I've been doing homework and there's this great book Caitlin Pierce lent me…"
"I'd like that. Say, how about I move the TV and stuff upstairs and then we can play a bit of Pac-Man or something?"
"You're not moving anything larger than a breadbox," Mel chastised.
"I'd use my wand," Cass protested. "Besides, why does everyone compare size to a breadbox? Has anyone here ever seen a breadbox? I sure as hell haven't. Bread comes in those little grocery-store bags or in those loaf pans the house-elves use."
"That reminds me," Madam Pomfrey snapped her fingers. "Severus, would you arrange to have a house-elf go and wait on these two? And don't give me that look, Miss Granger; you don't have to be abusive to elves to get help from them. Honestly, the little dears really like to help."
"And that reminds me," Cass grinned suddenly. "You are now the proud owner of nine house-elves, Hermione."
"What?"
"She 'bought' them when we cased the Malfoy manor," Mel explained. "As a joke, she told them they were a present for you."
"Some joke! What goes through your mind, Yankee?"
"But think of it! You can teach them to alphabetize and they'll be your little library assistants."
"I can fetch my own books, thank you very much."
"Not presently." Severus patted her hand while Madam Pomfrey's back was turned. "And at least your elves will have a good dental plan."
"And after all, someone has to do the laundry. Between your own and your fiancé's messy aprons after potions class, I'd say you're in line for some very happy house-elves." Everyone turned to stare at Madam Pomfrey, who smiled. "Oh, honestly, you think you've kept the secret so awfully well. It's been obvious for the past year and a half or so."
"Really?" Mel picked up a tongue depressor and began to inspect it before gnawing experimentally on the end. "It took me two months to notice that."
"Well, dear, you're not exactly the prime master of disguise yourself. I first noticed these two didn't hate each other when Severus burned his hand and refused to cancel work on a Wolfsbane potion with his assistant. For the brave and secretive war hero, the dear boy's always been a bit of a baby when it comes to burns, ever since an accident with a cauldron in his second year. You had such an incident yourself in your third, brewing potions in Moaning Myrtle's lavatory, and instead of coming straight to me to have it mended, you have a scar, right there." The perceptive mediwitch tapped a pale stripe just above Mel's elbow.
"But…I thought you didn't go to Hogwarts, Melanie," Hermione observed, startled.
"Indeed, there is no Melanie Watling in the records." Madam Pomfrey smiled. "There is also no record of Elena Marie Catesby's hair being that reddish shade or of her eyes being green, or her ever having a tan, but some of us are more adept at spotting a makeover than others."
"I figured it out when I saw the pictures of Draco's fifth birthday," Cass explained. "The facial expressions give you away, Mel."
"I never spotted it! Elena, you're…" Severus was stammering as he looked his former student up and down.
"Not fat anymore?" Mel's smirk had returned, though her eyes were still a little scared.
"Well, I wouldn't put it quite that way, but yes."
"You'd know, professor. I nearly killed myself trying to slim down by magical means. That's what I was brewing when I burned my arm, metabolism enhancer."
"I gathered as much, from the missing ingredients. But…how did you manage this? You look utterly different." Severus, now that he knew Poppy knew, sat down by Hermione and slipped an arm about her back. "I wish you could see a 'before' picture –she's pulled a Tonks on us."
"Has she figured it out?" Mel asked, afraid. "I keep avoiding her if I can, 'cause if anyone could spot who I used to be, it's her."
"She just thinks you're a little preoccupied," Cass reassured. "But seriously, the change is impressive. How'd you get the shape of your face to change?"
"I didn't." For the first time, Mel seemed a little proud of what she had managed to accomplish. "I straightened my hair and cut it differently, after I lost about a thousand pounds, and then the tan and a few makeup tricks did most of it."
"You didn't charm your eyes, I can tell that much," Severus observed, "but they used to be blue, not green." Mel touched her eye and shifted the colored contact lens. Everyone but Hermione flinched.
"That answer your question?" Hermione giggled slightly. "You wear these, too?"
"No, but my mother does. She used to put colored ones in at parties and people'd spend half the night asking what was new."
"I couldn't touch my own eye, but the glasses I used to wear made Quidditch so bloody hard I got them lasered." Cass cringed at the memory. "Nasty process."
"Couldn't you put a water-repelling charm on the lenses?" Mel asked, being a former bespectaclate as well. Cass shook her head.
"It wasn't rain that was the problem, it was peripheral vision. Glasses can't help that much with that –and getting them smashed into my head with a Bludger wasn't nice, either."
"Same goes for hockey pads," Mel observed. Cass nodded in agreement, then started.
"How'd you know I got cut up once with hockey pads?"
"Er…"
"Sevvy, you great radish! I told you the brain colander was a bad idea!"
"I only saw after that hockey game and the one time in the classroom with John," Mel explained. Unfortunately, this only made Cass turn a darker shade of red.
"Er…which time in which classroom?"
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"I will kill –I will do worse than kill! I will drain the smile out of that face and replace it with the blackest vitriol human suffering can distill. I will watch as that filthy slut of a human wolf howls grief to the cold moon and as she does I will cut her throat!"
Andrew Catesby had bad habits. One of them was thinking out loud when he was angry. Another was abusing house-elves, but that was the least of his problems now. Besides, the American Aurory Special Ops had confiscated his elves and made them quite happy at Hogwarts, St. Mungo's, and the Sticky Lick. Martial law still reigned, which meant that the renegades, rebels and rogues were policeman kings of Britain.
And even if that uppity half-breed Tom Riddle was finally deceased, that only left the road to power less obstructed for a pureblooded aristocrat like Catesby. Lucius Malfoy's death was equally welcome, though Andrew would have preferred to find that blond strumpet Narcissa dead. Lucius at least had been good to share brandy and cigars with at the Dragon Club. His son was likely useless, thanks to the half-human trollop Tyler and the blood traitor Snape.
There were so few of the old guard left. Anyone who had put their oar in behind Voldemort was now either dead, disgraced to society, imprisoned, or a heroic spy-traitor. Catherine Macnair, for all her faults, was likely the best ally Catesby would find –she had been traveling during the war and managed to completely miss Voldemort's recruiting and rise to power. Her uncle Walden was a sadistic fool with a vaguely unnatural fondness for certain kinds of animal; but Catherine was mostly alright, if a little flighty and oblivious. Andrew's deceased wife had once read in a letter from Catherine an inquiry as to whether 'this You-Know-Who has a decent spring collection out.' Mistaking the Dark Lord for a designer was the very peak of political insensibility, and it wasn't a lack of intelligence. Catherine could recite the names, positions and statistics for half of England's Quidditch teams, brew potions nearly as well as the traitor, cast more complicated charms than the average Master in the subject, and kept the most obscure, intricate set of account books on earth for her many investments and corporations.
That was another reason for choosing to cast his lot in with Catherine. She was stinking rich, having decided that even if Muggles were inferior, it was no crime to use them as a sort of crop, cultivating and harvesting as one pleased. She was no slaver, no cannibal or headhunter, but something darker and unquestionably more fiendish.
Catherine Macnair was a stockbroker, and she would help Andrew win his revenge.
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