One of the things I have always loved most about Hermione is the way she's the most intelligent person I've ever met and yet when she's trying to play coy, she's utterly clueless. To most people, discovering that their ex-girlfriend had their baby is not an opportunity for flirting with a current love interest. I am not most people. I see right and wrong with extreme clarity, I will raise this baby. And no, I'm not completely prepared to do that, but I know it's the right thing to do, and I will do it. It doesn't cause me much trouble.
"Where does Snape live, anyway?" Harry asked, suddenly, and I glared at him, because he was interrupting. "I mean, the Princes were purebloods, there must be a place where they lived."
"The Princes were insane, though," Hermione said, with that look she always gets when she knows something neither of us does. "The house would bar anyone who wasn't full-blood from entering, it's still there, obviously, but Snape couldn't go in. Nor could the twins. Anyway, none of us would know where it was, it was built in the nineteen eighties, after Snape's mother left."
"But Pansy could, and Ginny, and my daughter," I said. "They're as pureblooded as I am." Hermione nodded. "And the call is for Harry and I, not for you, if it's something that wouldn't pose a challenge to you then it would be best if you couldn't get in."
"Ginny wouldn't get separated from the babies," Harry piped up, in that typical naïve way of his.
"I think if she'd been given a choice she wouldn't have gotten kidnapped, Harry," Hermione said, primly, moving from me to stand between us again. She bit her lip, looping her arm through Harry's again. She's always been like that with him, and it used to drive me insane, until I realized that there's nothing behind it. Well, there's something behind it, obviously, but it's just a friendship, nothing more. That made me feel a great deal better.
Not that I wouldn't get her if she and Potter were together.
It would just be slightly harder.
"So where is this place?" I asked, "It seems like a decent starting point." Hermione gave me one of those long-suffering looks of hers before she replied.
"Malfoy, is your house on a map?" She asked, still giving me the look. I shook my head, of course the Manor has never made an appearance on a map, it's unplottable, it would have been stupid to have it any other way. At least fourteen people wanted to kill my father at any given point in my childhood. "And, what, exactly, is it that leads you to think the Princes would put theirs on one?"
"Malfoys are superior to all other beings, or didn't you know?" Harry said, "but that's a good starting point. For Malfoy, I can't go in either, which means if anyone's there at all, it's Pansy."
"And Ginny. Think about it, if she had any chance in hell of finding her kids, she would, wouldn't she?" Hermione asked, turning to Harry again. "So, are we sending Draco?"
"I'll go, I'm not getting sent," I said, indignant. Hermione gave me on of those looks that reads 'of course, dear,' she only gives those when she knows she's won. "And, if I'm going, where am I going?"
"And if he's going, what am I supposed to do?" Harry asked, looking at Hermione.
"I'm not going into mortal peril while he stays home and does research!"
"I'm not staying home and doing research while he's in mortal peril!"
"And you're both fathers?" Hermione asked, irritated. "Harry and Draco- birth control for the ages. I cannot believe people sleep with you two."
"Person," Harry said, raising his hand, I gave the obligatory male snort of disgust before defending myself.
"You'd shag me," I said, obviously to Hermione, not Potter. "I'm sexy."
"Is now the time for this conversation?" She asked, blushing furiously, but not, I noticed, denying it.
"You would! I knew you would!"