Chapter 5 The Name Game
To say that Snape was shocked with being confronted with Draco Molfay would be an understatement. To find out that he was alive and well and being taught elemental magic by Chandos and apparently under the personal protection of six adults and six children after having attended his funeral and comforting the grieving parents left him flabbergasted. One thing was sure, Lucius Malfoy had some serious explaining to do.
All through lunch Snape watched Draco out of the corner of his eye. He barely listened to the conversations going on around him and when spoken to was only semi-coherent with his responses. This was a mystery that needed to be solved. His attention was so firmly centered on Draco that he really couldn't say what the other children looked like and other than LeAnn he was not sure about the other adults either.
After lunch Snape cornered Chandos. "Explain how you came to have a dead child who is apparently alive and well sitting at your dining table."
"Come into my office and I'll give you the whole story. After all, I owe it to you after you agreed to allow LeAnn to dye your hair purple and wear a dress for dinner tonight. Besides, better you hear it from me than try to ferret out the information from another source." With that Chandos led a very shocked looking Snape into his office and shut the door.
"What the HELL are you talking about? Purple hair and a dress? Chandos, I can assure you that your idea of humor is twisted and sick. I would never wear a dress and as far as allowing someone to dye my hair…That person would face a very painful death."
Chandos went over and opened a file cabinet drawer and began searching for something as he drawled out slowly. "Oh but you did you know. You held a brilliant conversation with my wife. She asked you if you liked pink dresses and you said 'yes lovely' then she told you that it would look smashing on you if your hair were purple and you said 'I agree' then she said its settled then, I'll dye your hair purple this afternoon and lend you my pink dress for dinner and your response to this was….'Wonderful my dear'"
By the end of the explanation Chandos had withdrawn several files which he turned to hand to a horrified looking Snape.
"No, please tell me you're joking. I feel sick because if your not she'll make me do it just to humiliate me. LeAnn never liked me, you know she'll try to make me look the fool." Snape said as he sank down onto a chair, face white and hands shaking.
"Humm, perhaps a little bit of blackmail is in order here. If I get LeAnn to agree to not dye your hair and make you wear a dress then you agree that what you learn in this office goes no further. Deal?" Chandos asked brightly.
Snape scowled. "I wish I could make that promise but it depends on what I learn. I can promise that I'll keep it confidential unless I honestly believe the Order needs to know. Will that do?"
"I can't think of anything I would disclose here today that could be of any concern to the order so it will have to do for now. First thing you need to know is that LeAnn has an uncanny talent for feeling the pain of young elementals. That's how we found Ice. The constant pain that he felt from the abuse he was suffering tormented LeAnn till I found him and rescued him. Those documents you're holding prove the abuse which allowed us to get custody of the boy. The natural father signed him over without a second's hesitation when he found out I would press charges if he didn't. He could not stand the idea of his reputation being damaged." As Chandos explained how he had come to find and take custody of Draco his face became more and more bitter. "I hate ass-hole, fuckers like that. Pure blooded supremacist who cant see that the world isn't his to play with. Matter of fact, most of our children were found that way. Tide and her father were captured by death eaters when she was three. Her screams kept LeAnn up for almost a week. They wanted Jonaus to work with them to translate some books they found to try and bring back Moldy Shorts. I brought the two of them back here and Jonaus has been here since. He teaches the children Runes and Ancient Languages. About six years ago he adopted another one of the children LeAnn found. A runaway called Blaze. Go ahead and look through those files and then if you have any questions I'll try and answer them. Ok?"
Severus began looking through the files Chandos had given him. Broken bones, burns, welts and burses. It was all here. Dracos statement, Chandos statement, LeAnn's statement, the statements of various healers and law enforcement officials, statements from children's services and last but not least a statement from Lucius Malfoy confessing all and legally giving up parental rights to his son in order to avoid prosecution.
When Snape first started reading he looked curious, as time passed that look changed to anger and finally rage. "How could that son of a bitch do something like this to his own flesh and blood? How Chandos? I just don't understand how someone could be so evil to their own child."
"It's an all too common story Severus. I told you that most of our children were found by LeAnn the same way. I guess its fortunate that she only senses elementals or we would have thousands of children here although I cant help but feel a little guilty about the ones we can't help." Chandos explained.
Snape asked, "How many then? You mentioned Jonaus and his daughter, how many others did she find this way?"
"My daughter Fire, Martin and Asia's daughter Smoke. Two out of seven kids weren't abused although when we found Blaze he wasn't in an abusive situation but he was in an unsafe situation. He had run away from an abusive past. Shadow has been with us the longest with Silver a close second. Tracy our Charms and Modern Language teacher adopted him when he was 5. LeAnn and I adopted Shadow when he was 4." Chandos explained.
With a laugh Snape said. "Wait, it's going to take me all four days just to sort everyone out. Start over and put them all were they belong ok?"
"Chandos married to LeAnn called Mother and Father by all the children but mom and dad by three. Fire, Shadow and Ice. Martin married to Asia, parents to Smoke. Tracy, parent to Silver and last but not least we have Jonaus, father to Tide and Blaze. And thus we finish the name game." Chandos said in a sing song voice.
"And all one big happy family. Incredible that you can all make it work somehow." Snape laughed.
"So are you going to tell Dumbly about Ice or not?" Chandos asked.
After a moments thought Snape shook his head no. "I don't see how this information could be of any use to him so now you have to get me out of the dress before I get put into it and don't forget about the hair. Of course you do understand that my assignment is to try to convince you to return to the order so I'll bring up the subject three times a day. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening, that way when I make my report each night I can honestly say I'm trying to get you back."
(Hogwarts)
"We think we may have found him but we aren't sure. He matches the description and the age but as far as we can tell he doesn't have the scar. I'm just not 100 sure. So what do you want us to do? Continue watching him or bring him in?"
Albus looked tired for a moment before he sighed. "Bring him in. We can do a paternity spell on him and find out for sure. If your wrong we'll just memory charm the boy and send him home again but we have to check out all the leads. When can you get him here?"
"I don't know, these children tend to stick together although this boy does wander off more than the others. We'll just have to wait for our chance to grab him. I'll let you know."
"All right, keep me posted and thank you." With that Albus closed the floo conection.
He hated this whole thing, the searching, getting his hopes up then having them dashed over and over again but he would find him no matter what it took. It was for the greater good after all. He would have to get one of the order members to make a withdrawal from the vault. He was running short of funds again and his helpers would need to be paid, also he wasn't sure how they intended to get the boy here but whatever method that they used would have to be paid for. With another sigh he threw some floo powder into the fireplace and called Mad Eye. He was usually the best one for these missions because he somewhat intimidated the goblins and they tended to give him less trouble.
When Moody answered his floo Albus told him, "I need you to visit the Potter vault for me Moody. Take out about 10,000 this time. We have a lead that looks very promising and I need to pay our helpers overseas."
"Will that be enough to last for a few months? You know the trouble I go through to make these withdrawals and I don't want to do it more often than necessary. The last time Gobbles and I got into a shouting match in the lobby of the bank. I had to remind him that you had power of attorney for the account and were the magical guardian of the boy and thus had the authority to disburse funds from the account as you saw fit." Moody complained.
"It's enough. Don't forget we're coming up on October 31 in a little less than a month and I'll be getting his yearly stipend for his day to day care. That plus the 10,000 should hold us through till Christmas."