Chapter Three
Thankfully, the next morning was a Friday, and Hermione was able to argue her way into handling her workload by Floo—the wizarding version of working from home—by claiming a personal emergency. It was technically true, but she did feel a bit of anxiety over the fact that she had to stretch the truth like this, at all. She was no closer to figuring out what to do about Elora than she'd been the night before, either.
Honestly, her own actions tempted her to bat her forehead against the nearest wall. In her heart, she knew there was something going on at a level she couldn't quite comprehend, something natural and perfect in the way she and this infant were with each other. Intellectually, she knew there was no way to explain that without sounding like she'd gone 'round the bend. She'd thought the emotional argument proved by her mother, of all people, softening on the idea of her finding a way to keep the child just from spending a few hours with her, but even that was hardly any sort of tangible evidence.
Hermione paced before her cold, unused fireplace as she waited for her workload to appear.
Even if things could continue this way—which she very well understood they couldn't—there was no sort of plan for what to do with Elora in the days after this weekend had come and gone.
Halting her pacing, she snatched up her coffee mug from the mantle and tipped it back, only to find she'd already drained it, entirely. With a sigh, she turned on her heel and returned to the kitchen to pour another cup. She loved having that child in her life, already. The fact that her own actions regarding said child had her doubting her own intellect—as though she suddenly wasn't one of the brightest witches to ever graduate Hogwarts? Not so much love for that aspect of this entire mess, no.
And last night was odder than the first night. Shaking her head, she added a little sugar and stirred, still just a bit groggy enough to get mesmerized by the glinting of the dark, swirling liquid under the sunlight through the nearby window.
Giving herself a good shake, now, she lifted the mug for a long, centering series of sips. The first night, Elora hadn't made a peep except to be fed or changed. Last night, however, the little tot seemed to be having some very odd dreams. Hermione dreaded to call it what it was, but for lack of a more fitting description, the girl had been yipping in her sleep. Like . . . like a puppy excited at seeing birds fly past a window!
She chewed at her lower lip, fretting a little. Everything she'd seen from Elora had seemed perfectly healthy and natural for a growing infant. If anything, she thought possibly Elora was a bit better behaved than any of her cousins' children. Even Teddy had been a comparative nightmare on the rare occasion she'd helped Harry babysit after the War.
It made her worry. Was there something . . . wrong with Elora? Was that why she'd been abandoned? Oh, she didn't condone the action no matter what the parents' motivation had been, but she understood some people could be thoughtlessly cruel in their reactions to such things.
The sudden whooshing sound of her paperwork appearing in a burst of magical green flames made her jump as she stepped back into the living room. She just barely refrained from spilling her coffee down her shirt.
Her shoulders slumping, she crossed to the fireplace and set her mug back upon the mantle. She scooped up the armful of scrolls and folders, sighing. It was more than her imagination that her workload seemed a bit heavier than usual, she thought.
As Hermione straightened up and turned toward the desk tucked in a corner of the room, she heard Elora kicking up a fuss from the bedroom.
She let her head drop forward as she uttered a groan. "Of bloody course," she muttered under her breath as she trudged across the floor to set the stack atop her desk.
She adored this little girl, but she thought she might just finally understand what she'd put her own poor mother through twenty-four years prior.
Fenrir was groggy as he came to, curled up in the corner of some dank little alley. Climbing to his feet, he stretched, smoothed his hands down over his hair and then patted himself down, making sure the unseemly rest didn't make him too horrible a sight for the Muggles passing on the street to behold. Last thing he needed right now would be some ruddy Muggle authorities called on him for looking like a monster coming out of an alleyway.
That it was, in fact, exactly what was happening as he stepped out into the street beneath the bright, late morning sunshine, was hardly the point.
Nothing mattered except remaining unhindered from his pursuit of Frigga and the Mudblood. Tonight was the full moon. He'd felt its closeness pulling at him, already, as he slept.
Shaking his head, he closed his eyes and took a long sniff of the awful city air. Ruddy Muggles every bloody where, even here, where he understood it was a 'quiet neighborhood.'
At last picking the familiar scents from the tangle of smells winding the mild breezes, he started off, again.
Hermione closed the door to the bedroom as silently as she could. She didn't know how she'd pulled it off, but somehow, she had managed to make it through her workload and handle Elora. That she got the child down for bed early just as Draco was supposed to pop over for a late dinner seemed nothing short of a miracle.
The sigh of relief she breathed as she plastered her back against the wall beside the door was short lived as a knock sounded from her front door. Not as though she wasn't expecting him, but a few seconds to collect herself would've been fantastic.
Pulling away from the wall, she dragged her tired limbs down the short corridor to the living room. "Just a second," she said as she gave her body a shake.
Grasping the knob, she opened the door to find him standing there, some bags from that restaurant she fancied down the street dangling from one hand.
Tired as she was, Hermione covered her mouth with her hands to stifle a sound of shock.
Draco grinned. "I figured between work and the baby, you were probably running around like a mad woman today."
She let her fingers slip down from her mouth just enough to speak. "You, Draco Malfoy, did something as . . . as 'Muggle' as getting takeaway?"
"Well," he said with a shrug, "I can be thoughtful once every few years, or so."
Snickering, she greeted him with a kiss and stepped aside for him to enter. "Elora's asleep, let's try not to wake her."
He was so close! He could feel it! Fenrir could swear he was right on the edge of locating them, just a few more yards . . . .
But the moon.
It was too close. If he tried to stay out here like this even long enough to figure out which building it was, there would be no telling what could happen. He'd definitely shift, definitely wreak havoc . . . and potentially lose the chance to find them, at all.
Maybe it would be fine, he thought, as he grudgingly secured himself in the basement of the nearest building. Casting a silencing charm and fortifying the walls, doors, and windows with a flick of his wand, he tossed on the added measure of weaving a deterrent into his wards, diverting anyone who might think to come down here. Merlin, he hated being this careful and paranoid, especially when it came to acts that would inadvertently protect humans, but he had to say he didn't hate Muggles quite as much as he hated wizards. Muggles didn't even believe his kind existed . . . how sad that that was better than the way they were treated by wizarding kind.
He tucked way the implement behind a battered old sofa. Grumbling under his breath, he breathed deep. This was it. Moonrise. Even shielded from direct sight of the night sky, he could sense it. Fenrir started stripping down, aware he didn't have many options left to him if he shredded the clothes on his back.
Praying fate would be kind on whatever happened with his daughter tonight, he waited for the change to overtake him.
Hermione pulled away, letting out a shivering breath as she opened her eyes. Dinner had been wonderful, and they'd sat on the sofa chatting . . . which always led to other things, and she just didn't have it in her to go any further than a kiss, under the circumstances. She could already tell what he was going to say by the way his brows pinched together.
"I'm sorry, I just can't." She shook her head, frowning. "It just feels too awkward with the baby here—"
"Sleeping, in the next room, behind a closed door," he said, a disbelieving laugh edging his words.
Pushing him back, she sat up. "I know, I know. I said I'm sorry, and I am! Look, I'm just not quite used to this. It feels too weird."
His shoulders moving with a heavy sigh, Draco nodded. "All right, all right. I suppose I understand. . . . Any chance we could drop her with your mum at the last minute?"
The witch snickered as she stood and started for the kitchen to set another pot of coffee to brew. "No, we can't. My parents have a date-night every Friday."
"Oh, that's just adorable," he said with a smile. "Think we'll be like that when we're old?"
She uttered a scoffing sound from the other room as she puttered about filling the carafe and setting up the filter. "My parents aren't old, Draco. But that aside, what do you mean?"
He shrugged, sitting back on the sofa and stretching out his legs. "You know? If some day we'll do stuff like that. What is it Muggles call it? Keeping the magic alive? God, it's funny how they toss magic into so many statements when they don't even believe in it."
Popping her head back into the room, she smirked. "First of all, some Muggles do believe in magic, second . . . well, I imagine that if we make it that far without murdering one another, we'll be able to think up some rather interesting ways to keep what we've got 'alive.'"
With a laugh, he nodded. As she disappeared back into the kitchen, he opened his mouth to speak, but the fireplace crackled to life, then.
"My apologies for intruding on your evening, Miss Granger," his mother's voice sounded through the wash of green flames. "But is Draco there with you?"
When Hermione tipped her head back into the living room once more, her chestnut eyes comically wide, Draco groaned, letting his head fall back. "I'm here, Mother."
"Oh. Oh, um, I don't mean to interrupt your evening, but your father is requesting your presence here at the manor."
Setting his head level to glare at the fireplace, he asked, "What for?"
There was some muttering from the flames at that. Hermione almost burst out laughing when it seemed like Narcissa might've said How the bloody hell should I know? before her actual response of, "I'm not sure. Please just come. Good evening, Miss Granger."
"Good evening, Mrs. Malfoy."
The flames sputtered out and Draco turned his disbelieving gaze on his girlfriend. At the very least, they could both say it was obvious that Narcissa was far less opposed to their relationship than Lucius. The idea that his father was probably aware of precisely where his son was, and might've fabricated some sort of emergency simply to disrupt their evening was not out of the realm of possibility in either of their minds.
"Wanker," he said in a hushed tumble of sound.
Hermione laughed, not just because Draco had insulted Lucius, but because it was with such a Muggle word. "You should go."
He curled his lip in a sneer as he stood from the sofa. "How about I come by tomorrow, around lunch time? Maybe we take little miss to the park down the street?"
She smiled, still so warmed by his whole 'test-run' idea. "Maybe," she said with a nod, though she was a little concerned about taking the baby out with Draco in public before sorting what do to about her legally.
"Okay, I'll see you tomorrow." He pulled her to him for a quick kiss and then left.
Her shoulders slumped. She hated to see him go, but now she could just curl up and sleep. Retreating back into the kitchen, she turned off the coffee pot and then headed to the bedroom.
As she eased open the door, she heard another series of yips from inside the room . . . . Just like last night. Her shoulders drooped. She hoped it was just some odd noise the girl made—perhaps her biological parents had owned a dog and, in that way infants had, the baby had picked up mimicking the sound.
Stepping over to the cradle to check if the child was sleeping restfully, her heart dropped into her stomach. The little cushion inside was empty. In a state of disbelief, she picked up the blanket. "Elora?!"
Wide-eyed, she spun around, darting her gaze about the room. The windows were closed, nothing was amiss, but . . . . The idea the infant had somehow gotten out of the cradle on her own was ludicrous!
"Elora?" she repeated, feeling like an idiot, because the baby couldn't very well answer her.
But then, she heard it. A little . . . growling yip.
Her brows pinching upward, Hermione lowered herself slowly to her knees, the blanket still clutched in one hand. Swallowing hard, she peered beneath her bed.
"Oh, dear," she said in a barely audible whisper at the sight of a tiny canine snout topped with a pair of amber eyes peeking out at her. "Elora?"
Another yip. The pup reached for her with one paw, the same way the human baby would try to grab her face or her hair.
Sitting back, Hermione tapped her fingers against the floor, her heart ready to burst from her chest. "C'mon, Elora. C'mon out." As she spoke, she flickered her gaze to the window. From this angle, she could see the round, pale light of the full moon through her semi-sheer curtain.
So . . . not a Muggle baby, after all. A . . . a werewolf baby. She'd found in the woods. Oh, God, she'd put her foot in it, now! The parents were probably frantic with worry, not some terrible abandoners!
As she watched the pup crawl out from beneath the bed and pad over to her, playful as you please, she held in a sob. She'd not rescued this child. She'd stolen her! And now, she wasn't sure how to return her, because she couldn't just go and leave her in the woods hoping her parents would return, rather than having moved on in an attempt to find their child! And there was no way werewolves would enter a Muggle area in search of her.
They probably thought their baby lost forever because of her!
The only werewolf she knew of was Fenrir Greyback, and who knew where he was? Even if she managed to track him down, she imagined he'd be just as likely to try to eat the child—and then make another stab at having his way with her, like he had back during the War—as he would be to help her find the parents.
Elora was moving funny, twitching her little bum, and Hermione realized what the problem was. As a fully-grown werewolf, she'd have shredded anything she was wearing, entirely, but as an infant, pup-Elora wasn't much larger than human-baby-Elora, so the poor thing's tail must be smooshed by her diaper. How horridly uncomfortable she must be!
Hurriedly lifting the pup into her arms, Hermione placed her on the bed and set to opening the onesie so she could get the diaper off. Lord, she hoped there wasn't a mess in there—she didn't fancy the idea of having to clean baby poo from Elora's fur.
As she unfastened and removed things, she tried not to berate herself too harshly. How could she have known? Even the sleep-yipping wasn't a true hint of it. Teddy was the child of a werewolf and he was human. Of course, Remus had fretted during Tonks' pregnancy that his child would end up like him, so perhaps the odds were 50/50? She was sure there was nothing in the texts about baby werewolves!
She knew! She'd looked! She'd researched everything she could possibly—
"Ouch!" Hermione snatched her hand away from Elora, dropping a startled gaze on the pup.
The little thing had turned onto her back, still playful and clearly looking for belly rubs. Just a happy baby-werewolf, nipping at the nearest thing, as canine pups did when playing.
Swallowing hard, Hermione smiled, reaching her uninjured hand out to scratch gentle circles on that fuzzy little belly.
For as long as she dared, she turned her attention to the fingers of her other hand. Elora'd not just nipped at her. She'd made a gash, drawing blood across three fingers.
Bitten by a baby-werewolf.
Hermione didn't even know if there was a danger in that, or not. Letting out a shivering sigh, she returned her full attention to the pup.
Holding in a sniffle, she curled her wounded fingers loosely as she whispered, "I'll figure out how to get you back to them, I promise." Even knowing what she did now about the infant, the thought of parting with her broke the witch's heart into a million jagged bits.