Author's Notes: Have any of you ever read the book, "The Neverending Story?" Well, I'm writing the Neverending Thesis. Sigh... I'm on page 65 and I'm getting pretty sick of it! If this chapter isn't as exciting as usual, it's because I'm brain-dead.
Little Draco is actually modeled after my nephew, SugarBoo, who is staying with me right now. Strangely enough, he is blond with grey eyes, and acts not unlike Draco. Right now SugarBoo is watching "The Last Unicorn" on DVD and is getting spaghetti all over my couch. He's a little creep, but I love him.
Chapter Twenty "So you're not even going to tell me what kind of project you're working on?" I asked Professor Snape, handing him the vial of shining, silvery blood. The liquid actually seemed luminous, as if lit from within. The needle hadn't hurt Amalthea at all. Drawing her blood had almost made me sick, but she had been completely unconcerned. She still refused to stick her nose out of the Stable until Professor Snape left, however.
"I am sure you will be informed of it in time," The Professor told me. "I assume that the headmaster has warned you of the dangerous situation that could arise if the Dark Lord chooses a new leader among his Death Eaters?"
I nodded. I glanced over at Draco, who was preoccupied with poking some kind of bug he had found in our new garden.
"Unicorn blood is very potent," The Professor continued. "And it has powerful healing properties. It will not restore life, nor impart immortality, but it will heal many wounds. It would be prudent to keep some on your person."
"Could I keep some in this?" I plucked one of my dragon hair sticks out of my braids and removed the emerald top. "Draco told me that these were good for storing potions and stuff in."
"Indeed." Professor Snape studied the dragon-shaped vial, and his long hands were steady as he carefully poured some of the silvery substance into it. "Please be careful, Miss Silverthorn. I'm not entirely clear what will transpire tonight with the Dark Lord, but most likely, it will not be good. The Dark Lord has never favored women, but Bellatrix has proven herself capable of tremendous loyalty. She attempted to find and restore the Dark Lord after his banishment, spent those years in Azkaban after openly refusing to recant her allegiance, and last year she killed Sirius Black. She has been planting suspicion in the Dark Lord's mind about Lucius, and since the whole affair between Lucius and the Ministry of Magic, he's been only too eager to listen."
The Professor was a strange person, I thought. Sometimes under all his nastiness, I sensed that he cared about people deeply. "Professor, were you friends with my mother?"
Professor Snape considered a moment before he said, "She was one of the few students at this school who genuinely respected my intelligence. She also had the good sense not to idolize Black and his little band of idiots. She actually insulted James Potter one year when he assumed she would accompany him to the Yule ball." He smiled a bit at the memory.
"I respect you, too," I told him earnestly. "I do. I was just really upset when I ran into you in the dungeons. I, um, hope that nothing bad happens to you tonight."
The Professor looked at me intently, and I had the feeling that he was a bit uncomfortable. "Miss Silverthorn," He said, so softly that I had to lean closer to hear him. "You are very young."
"I'm nineteen!" I knew that since wizards lived so much longer than Muggles, large age differences between wizards and witches weren't as big of a deal.
"You are an innocent," Professor Snape said, and his voice was rough with pain. "You are as innocent as your familiar. She can't bear to be near me. She can't even bear to look at me, because of the things I've done, the things I've seen..."
"But it wasn't entirely your fault," I said. "You had to do terrible things."
Professor Snape sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose as if warding off a headache.
I had a dreadful feeling that I wasn't going to like what he was about to say next, but just before his reply, Draco began screaming. It startled me. I had been so engrossed in my conversation that I hadn't been watching him. The little boy ran up to me, his hand covered in blood.
"Baby, what is it?" I grabbed his wrist and tried to look at the wound.
Draco howled, and I could barely make out the words "big bug." I took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the blood. His skin actually looked as though it had been burned by acid. Remembering what Professor Snape had told me, I opened the top of my hair stick, and dabbed a drop of the unicorn blood on the little boy's wound. To my amazement, it healed instantly and perfectly. The skin actually grew back in front of me.
"Miss Silverthorn, when I cautioned you to keep some of the unicorn blood in case of an emergency, I was not referring to an attack by a flesh-eating slug," Professor Snape said over Draco's screams. "You will need to ask Hagrid for some repellent." With that, he gave a strange, little smirk, and glided away, his black robes billowing behind him. He was probably relieved by the distraction.
"Baby, you can stop crying now," I told Draco. "Your hand is all better." Honestly, even at such a young age, he was a bit of a drama-prince.
"Draco Malfoy!" I looked up for the hundredth time from my copy of 'A Beginner's Guide To Transfigurations.' "I am trying to study. If you kick Twinky one more time, I'll- I'll give you a time out!"
The little boy and the house elf each looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. Finally, Draco realized that I had just threatened him with some kind of punishment.
"You're not my mummy!" Draco said, and ran for his room.
I laid my head down on my book and sighed. Taking care of a five-year old was a full time job. Any mention of taking a bath to wash the garden dirt off him made the little boy flee as if an entire herd of flesh-eating slugs was chasing him. He had already escaped my quarters once today without me knowing it, and I found him down in one of the potions classrooms. Twinky wasn't much help. After all, she was magically bound to obey Draco, so she wasn't a very good disciplinarian.
"Twinky, why don't you take the day off today?" I told the elf.
To my surprise, the house elf looked confused, and burst into tears. "Twinky is sorry, Missy. Twinky is sorry she is bad." She continued to cry and beat her head against the wall, until I promised her that she could scrub the kitchen area. Again. How was I going to keep my sanity living with these two? Studying was impossible with both of them distracting me.
I was relieved when someone knocked on my door, and Harry and Hermione showed up with their books for Muggle studies. It was nice to have visitors. Well, grown-up ones, at least.
"Your hair looks really great," I told Hermione. It was much sleeker and shinier than I remembered it.
"Thank you," The girl said a bit shyly. "It took me forever to get the knots out. Professor Dumbledore helped me get the stone-imps out of my hair. He got them in his beard one time when he was on a Muggle tour of Newgrange."
She and Harry sat on the sofa, and I made some tea for them. They glanced around my room curiously, noticing the crayon drawings that plastered the walls (a few were actually on the walls) the toys that cluttered the living room, and Twinky sitting on the kitchen counter scrubbing the sink.
For some reason, Hermione looked rather offended when she saw the house elf.
"Twinky, would you like some tea, too?" I asked.
The house elf's huge eyes grew even larger. "Tea? Tea? Missy is asking Twinky if she wants tea?" She burst into hysterical tears. "Missy is too good to Twinky!"
"I've been trying to give her a vacation," I told Hermione. I didn't want her to think that I had anything against house elves, especially after all the suspicions over Dobby. "But I think she has to stay here to protect Draco."
"Draco's here?" Harry said. "Oh, I was wondering about the toys and stuff." He reached beneath him and pulled out a wizard action-figure from beneath him. The doll made a huge fuss about having been sat upon, and Harry finally stuffed him beneath a cushion.
As if on cue, Draco glided into the room. The little boy rode a toy broomstick around my quarters, his feet dangling a few inches off the floor. It looked like he was chasing a tiny, golden ball with wings that flew just beyond his reach. "This broomstick is too slow," He wailed. "I need a real one! I won't fall off!"
"Oh," Hermione said, wide eyed. "He's just so...cute. I never thought I'd ever use that word to describe Draco Malfoy."
"Maybe they'll keep him like this," Harry muttered. "He'll be a lot less trouble."
"What's your name?" Draco asked Harry.
"Harry Potter."
"You can't be Harry Potter. He's a little boy, like me. My daddy always says that I have to be better than him. He says that if a half-blood boy can vanquish the Dark Lord, what should a pure-blood Malfoy boy be able to do?" Draco's lips turned down sulkily, and for a moment he looked like he was about to cry. "I don't like Harry Potter."
"Baby, you are good enough just as you are," I told the little boy. "Your daddy just told you that to make you try harder at things, but he was wrong. You'll always be just as good as Harry Potter or anyone else."
"My daddy's never wrong," Draco said, but the look on his face was unsure.
"How terrible," Hermione said. "No wonder Draco hates Harry so much."
"He's staying with me for awhile," I told them. "I told my uncle about Dobby disappearing, and now he's paranoid that the house elf is going to help Death Eaters break into Malfoy Manor to attack him."
"Dobby?" Harry said, as though he couldn't believe it. "He's harmless. He wouldn't do anything like that, even if Mr. Malfoy deserved it."
"I don't know about that, Harry." Hermione chewed her lip thoughtfully. "You know, Dobby worships you because you freed him. We don't know what he could do to someone he hated. Look at Kreacher." She looked like she instantly regretted saying that.
"Dobby isn't anything like that- that evil, low-life thing!" Harry became so upset that his face flushed pink. His eyes glittered wetly.
"Sorry, Harry," Hermione whispered.
I busied myself getting some cookies and milk out for Draco. He got off his broomstick long enough to eat, and for awhile he was actually calm and quiet.
"So what is Professor Lovelace like?" I asked the kids, desperately wanting to fill the uncomfortable silence that had descended upon them. "Since I've been raised in the Muggle world, Professor Dumbledore didn't think that it was necessary for me to take Muggle Studies."
Harry shrugged. "She's really nice. She's loads better than Professor Winterwind. She handles the Slytherins better, too. She can hex them back, for one thing, and she doesn't seem to aggravate them as much as the old professor did."
"She's been trying to focus on the theme of mercy in Tolkien's novel," Hermione said.
"Oh, that's strange," I said.
"What's wrong, Miriel?" Harry asked.
"It's just that my mother used to read the book to me. She would point out all the places where the characters were forgiven or shown mercy. She seemed to think that was the most important element of the story. She was really into that. I think that's why she had me go to a Catholic school run by the Sisters of Mercy. She wasn't religious, but the nuns were always doing kind things for people. I think my mom wanted that to rub off on me. I guess it's kind of odd that Professor Lovelace would see the novel in the same way."
"Well," Hermione said thoughtfully. "The ring is destroyed in the end because Frodo shows mercy to Gollum. The hobbit feels pity for him, and lets him live. If he hadn't, Frodo would never have been able to destroy the ring on his own. I think Tolkien wanted to demonstrate that mercy is stronger than anything. That's what I wrote in my paper."
"The Slytherins think it's a load of rubbish, of course," Harry said.
"Maybe they don't," I said. "Maybe they just have to pretend to. Maybe deep inside, it will really influence them, and later on in their lives they'll remember the message and they'll act on it."
"Oh, right." Harry said sarcastically. "I can already tell the novel is bringing about deep spiritual changes in Crabbe and Goyle."
"I know somebody named Crabbe and Goyle," Draco said. "Are you talking about their daddies?"
"Not everything is black and white, Harry," I said. I wanted to tell him about Draco's good side, but unfortunately, the silencing spell was still going strong. Strangely enough, it seemed to kick in even stronger when I was around Harry.
"Miriel's right," Hermione said. "You and Ron really need to realize that there are different sides to every story."
"Speaking of Ron, is there any particular reason he didn't come here today with you guys?" I asked.
Hermione looked uncomfortable. "He, um, doesn't trust the Malfoys very much. He also doesn't feel very comfortable around wealthy people. He's very sensitive that way. He couldn't afford any decent robes this year, and I think he feels embarassed about it."
Normally, I would have felt bad about that, but Ron had annoyed me so much that I was just relieved that he hadn't come.
"Ders a owl tryin' te get in," Draco said, his mouth full of cookie.
An owl pecked on one of the high windows, and I had to stand up on a chair to let it in. My order from Gilderoy Lockhart had arrived. I gave the bird an owl-treat, and restored the tiny crate to its original size. To my astonishment, it was absolutely huge! The two kids helped me to pry the lid off.
"What did I get? Is it a present for me?" Draco danced around in excitement.
"Gilderoy Lockhart sent me a bunch of free stuff," I told him. He sent me shampoos, conditioners, exfoliating body washes, body creams and foaming bath potions, all in matching, purple bottles with his signature printed across them in shimmering pink. He had also included a glossy autographed photograph of himself, a copy of his autobiography "Magical Me," and his latest publication, a book entitled, "Bathing With Bewitching Beauties." I had to laugh at the look of disappointment on Draco's face as he pawed through all the bottles, no doubt looking for something more interesting.
"Ugh! In his dreams!" Harry said when I showed him the title of the book. "What beauties would want to bath with him?"
I read the enclosed letter, which was beautifully written on lavender parchment. "He wants to meet me," I said. "He read about me and saw my photo in the Daily Prophet. He wants me to be a spokeswitch for his new line of hair care potions for witches with ultra-long hair. He says we can make a fortune."
"That stupid git just thinks that since you come from a famous family, that he can make money off you," Harry told me angrily. "He's a fraud. He would have left Ginny to die in the chamber of secrets. He tried to obliviate me and Ron, and accidentally obliviated himself. You can't trust him."
"I've been using his new anti-frizz potion on my hair," Hermione told me. "And it's great. It's a lot better than Sleekeazy's Hair Potion. It lasts longer, and it smells like pumpkin tarts."
"I can't believe you!" Harry glared at her as though he had just been betrayed.
"I can't use all this stuff," I told Hermione. "Why don't you take some? Harry, there must be some kind of potion here that could slick your hair down..." I stopped at the look on Harry's face.
"No thanks," Harry said, glowering. "I don't want to end up smelling like some kind of dessert. I'd rather have messy hair the rest of my life that use anything that idiot would come up with."
"Harry likes having messy hair." Hermione grinned. "He thinks it gives him the fresh-off-the-broomstick look."
This just seemed to make Harry angrier. He looked at Hermione as though he had never seen her before. "You're acting like a silly git- like Parvati." He spat this out as though it was a curse. With that, he slung his book satchel over his shoulder and left my quarters.
"What does that mean?" I asked Hermione, a little puzzled over Harry's moodiness. I'd finally gotten Harry to trust me enough to talk to me, and now he was being difficult.
"He's just not used to being around me and other girls, I suppose," She told me. "I don't really have any girl friends. I mostly spend my time with Ron and Harry. I find most of the girls in my year rather silly, actually. Harry's been really angry lately. Sirius was the closest thing Harry's ever had to a father. Losing him was really hard on him. I hate to think what Harry would do if he lost anyone else close to him."
We talked about a lot of different things, especially books, hair and men. She had recently broken up with Ron. It was so nice to finally have a friend to talk to. We really did have a lot in common. I realized after awhile that when she acted like a 'know-it-all,' it tended to be because she was feeling a bit insecure. It had been really hard for her to leave her parents and the Muggle world behind to come to school here, especially when she learned that some wizards considered Muggleborns to be inferior.
"Draco, would you be good for Twinky if I walked Hermione to dinner at the Great Hall?" I asked. The little boy had refused to take a nap after our long day of gardening, and now he was so tuckered out he looked like he was about to fall asleep on the couch.
"Maybe," He murmured.
"That's good enough for me," I told Hermione.
When we entered the Great Hall, the noise of the students chattering was deafening. Glancing up toward the head table where the teachers sat, I noticed that Professor Snape's chair was empty. Professor Dumbledore looked grim, and I could tell he was about to make an announcement. The students were definitely excited about something. Everyone at the Gryffindor table was talking, gathered together around issues of the daily prophet. Ron had a triumphant, gloating smile on his face. Harry looked profoundly shocked. When they saw me with Hermione, the Gryffindors all stared at me.
"What is it?" I asked. I looked at the front of the paper that lied open on the table. To my surprise, there was a photograph of Malfoy Manor. For a split second, I thought that there was a fireworks display above the castle. Something green and glittering exploded into the night sky, but then the green sparks formed into the shape of a skull, with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue. As I watched the photograph, the skull rose higher and higher, blazing in a haze of greenish smoke, until the white stone of the castle was illuminated with an eerie, green light.
"It's the Dark mark," Hermione whispered.
Many thanks to all my reviewers!
Ravens Dragon Wing: Thank you so much for reading my story! No, I'm not on vacation (I wish I was!) I'm just in the middle of a huge 70 page paper for school and a website. UGH! Luckily, I'll be done in just a week or two. Believe me, writing Harry Potter stories is much more entertaining.
Lady Liadan: I'm glad that you found my story at the Jason Isaacs shrine. Thanks for reading it, and for your great review. I've tried to make the Malfoys believable, keeping them in character, and yet showing different facets of them. I've also tried to be a bit unexpected, since I got tired of reading the same old stuff in fan fiction stories. I like your story a lot, and how Lucius uses a scrying mirror. I hope nobody ever spies on me like that! (HA!)
Escaped: Thank you for another inspiring review. What would I do without you? I think that Draco, like lots of little kids, projects his own feelings onto his pet. I do forgive you for blowing raspberries at my character, but you know, unrequited crushes can be a torturous kind of thing. And Snape can be difficult. I am looking forward to reading what happens to Rose next in her twisted love life!
Rycca Wolfbane: Okay, smarty pants, just because you know who Professor Lovelace is, doesn't mean you can ruin it for everybody else (haha!) Jurassic Park was a very cool story, and I'm sure the book was way more interesting than the movie. Unfortunately, I have no idea what an HP RP is.
Shadowstar21: Thank you so much for reading my story and reviewing. I'm glad you think the story gets better and better. I'm terribly insecure, and I worry about the opposite happening.
Arsinoe de Blassenville: Thank you for reviewing! If you think you'd like to babysit little Draco, you could babysit my nephew, and it would be just like it is in the story! His toys are everywhere, he rolls around in dirt and won't take a bath, and he keeps trying to boss me around. HA! I'm trying to teach him to like science-fiction and fantasy. I'm glad you like the mirror idea- I think that Hogwarts must be a very mysterious place, with all kinds of magical stuff going on that nobody knows about.
