Chapter 21: Alliances

Severus couldn't deny the accusation. He couldn't bring himself to lie to Draco, not now, not after... everything. "How did you find out?"

"How did I... you're not even going to try to deny it?" Draco's voice rose, shaking a little in fury. "You keep this a secret from me, lie to me by omission, and all you have to say for yourself is 'how did you find out'?"

"Well, given the secrecy we have tried to maintain on the subject, for obvious reasons..." An idea occured to him, and Severus felt his stomach knot. Hermione's Gryffindor honour would surely impel her to tell Draco the truth before allowing him to take on any responsibility for the child, but he'd had no idea that things had progressed so far between them. "Did she tell you?"

Draco laughed a grating, humourless laugh. "Oh, yes. She told me. Of course, she has no idea that she did. She has no idea that I know."

"You used Legilimency," Severus accused, and Draco looked away, which was confirmation enough. "You used Legilimency on her, without her knowledge or consent!"

"I wanted to tell her how I felt... how I feel!" Draco turned away, half raising his clenched fist. "But I didn't... I wasn't sure if she cared. If she'd... laugh. I just wanted to get an idea of how she felt, just a hint, and I know I shouldn't have done it, but I looked just for a second." He shook his head violently. "She was thinking about the baby. And you. About it being yours."

"Those who eavesdrop rarely hear good of themselves," Severus said, controlling his temper with an effort. "And those who invade the minds of others who trust them do not deserve to, as well you know, Draco."

"I know that!" Draco's voice cracked, and Severus realised that he was on the verge of tears. "I know that, but I gave in to the temptation, and you..." He wheeled to glare accusingly at his godfather ."You've been encouraging me! You told me to try, with her, and all the time you knew this!"

"Yes, I knew that I fathered the child. And you know, as everyone at the school does, that the father of Hermione Granger's child has chosen not to be named or acknowledged!" Severus fought the urge to turn away and pace himself, meeting Draco's eyes squarely - although with his Occlumantic shields firmly in place. "You were willing to accept a child without a father, or so you claimed. Is it really so dreadful a prospect to accept mine?"

Draco opened his mouth, and then closed it again. "And you'd just... give them up?" he asked, frowning. "To me?"

"I don't have them, so I can't give them up." The stolen picture burned at his conscience. "There is nothing between me and Miss Granger, there never has been, aside from a single... lapse of judgement. I would never have encouraged you if I had any intentions of my own, surely you know that."

"I thought... I didn't know what to think." Draco turned away again. "You said, once, that I was the closest you would ever come to having a son," he said in an oddly muffled voice. "But now I'm not. Don't you... want him?"

Severus felt his stomach unclench just a little. "I want him to be happy," he said quietly. "And I know that I would be a very poor father, even if his mother and I were - involved, as we are not."

"I think you'd do all right." Some of the tension went out of Draco's shoulders. "But you and Hermione really aren't..."

"No." He squelched the pain of that admission ruthlessly. "Win her, if you can, with my blessing."

"And the baby?" Draco asked tentatively.

"You are still the closest I will ever come to having a son, Draco," Severus said gently, reaching out to touch the thin shoulder. "Hermione's son or daughter is better off without me."

The shoulder twitched under his hand, but didn't pull away. "Didn't she want you to acknowledge him?"

"She offered me the opportunity, if I wanted it, but she knows that association with me would only make the child's life more difficult." She did know that. She must. She had made the offer purely out of Gryffindor honour, surely.

Draco pulled away, rubbing his hand absently over the end of his left arm. "I need to think about this," he said, not looking at Severus. "I wish you'd told me."

"Perhaps I should have. But a lifetime of keeping anything that might endanger me a secret is hard to overcome."

"Yeah." Draco headed for the door, ignoring or perhaps not noticing the broken china crunching under his feet. When he reached the door he stopped, resting his hand on it for a moment. "She likes me," he said very quietly. "As a friend. Nothing more. I don't think it could ever be more."

"I am sorry," Severus said quietly. And while he meant it, while he truly wanted his godson to be happy, a small and shameful part of himself rejoiced and hoped for something he refused to admit even to himself.

"Yeah." Draco's voice cracked again, and he slipped out hastily.

Severus mechanically cleaned up spilled tea and broken china, his brief contentment shattered around him once again. Draco was unhappy. His child had no prospects for fatherhood.

And he wouldn't let himself think about Hermione at all.

Draco didn't pay much attention to where he was going. He just walked, his head down and his eyes barely focused on the stone under his feet.

Hermione didn't care about him. Oh, she liked him, she thought he was a friend, but she didn't care. Not the way he wanted her to.

She was in love with his godfather.Really in love. Severus might think it had been a brief error of judgement, but Hermione loved her baby's father, she damned well longed for him. And Draco was just a friend.

It wasn't fair. He wanted to hate Severus for doing this to him, but that would mean hating the one person who did love him, who wanted him to be happy and had been willing to surrender any hope of being with her for Draco's sake. Because of course he'd been lying about there not being anything there. How could anyone know Hermione that well, fight beside her, sleep with her, and not care?

Except for Weasley, of course. But Weasley was an idiot, and the fact that he and Hermione had broken up only proved that he was too stupid to live.

A gust of cold wind jolted him out of his plans to murder Weasley in some humiliating way which would seem accidental, and he realised that he'd worked his way up to the astronomy tower. Habit, perhaps... it was a quiet place to hang out, he and Vince and Greg had often sneaked up here when they were younger.

A faint whiff of smoke suggested that he wasn't the only one who remembered that. A bulky figure was leaning against the stone parapet, a tiny gleam of red betraying a lit cigarette. He hadn't seen Draco, yet, there was still time to sneak away...

"Hey, Vince." Draco drifted over to stand beside him, feeling a brief ache at the emptiness of the space on his other side. "Thought you quit those things."

"I did." A long drag, and then a faint plume of pale smoke that was whipped away by the wind. "But everyone who told me to quit is dead now, so..."

"Yeah." Greg and Vince had been sneaking up here to smoke since their second year. He'd joined them, sometimes... not to smoke, because it made his hair stink, but to stand upwind and talk while they smoked and grunted agreement now and then. It had been... peaceful. And then, of course, they'd been ordered to drop the filthy Muggle habit when He had returned, and things had started to change for everyone. "I forgot how bloody cold it gets up here."

Vince snorted quietly. "Yeah. Helps if you remember your cloak."

"I wasn't planning to come up here at all. I was just... wandering around." Draco pulled his robes tighter around him.

"Yeah." There was a long pause. "Why'd you change sides?"

That was Vince. Mr Tactful and Indirect. "Because I didn't want to die."

Vince was frowning. Draco didn't need to be able to see his face in the darkness, he could hear that puzzled it-hurts-to-think frown, after all his years with it. "But He killed everyone who changed sides."

"He was trying to kill me anyway." Explaining things to Vince (and Greg) was such a habit by now that it didn't bother Draco to talk about it, somehow. "To punish my father for failing him. That's why He gave me the honour of trying to kill Dumbledore, because He thought I'd die trying. And then I failed at that, and my options were either to run away and get tortured to death when I was caught, or not run away and get tortured to death now. Running away seemed like the best choice."

"Yeah. See that." Vince thought it over for a minute. "But you didn't have to fight with Them."

"Yes I did. I wanted them to win, and kill Him, so I wouldn't get tortured to death." Draco shrugged. "Survival, Vince. Power's nice, but continued existence is better. If you're still alive you can try again for power later."

"You could've said something. To us, at least." Vince drew on the cigarette again, the red light brightening for a moment. "You just walked out on us, Draco."

"Well, yeah. Do you have any idea what He'd have done to you if he thought you knew where I was or what I was doing?" Draco sighed, leaning against the chilly stone parapet. "Wouldn't be much of a friend if I dragged you down with me."

"Huh." Clearly this was a new thought, and Draco waited patiently while it was digested. "Could've kept them off us, though. You knew who was gonna be hiding."

"And I would have, if I'd known - I was down with a concussion at that point." Draco sighed. "For what it's worth, Potter tried to stop the Aurors when Snape told him who was likely to be inside. He's an arsehole, but he's got a bit of a thing about people attacking women and kids after what happened to him and his mother."

"Point." Another new thought, and another pause. "I miss him," Vince said, abrupt and embarrassed.

There was no need to ask who. "Me too," Draco said quietly. "Both of you. We were together for a long time."

"Yeah." Vince turned around, leaning his back against the parapet and tipping his head back to look up at the stars. "It's not the same, with Pansy. I mean... it's not bad, or anything..."

Draco grinned, glad it was concealed by the darkness. Vince had had a crush on Pansy for years, and laboured under the fond illusion that Greg and Draco hadn't known. "Yeah. Pansy's not bad. Even if she did dump me."

"I thought it was the other way around," Vince said, sounding a little surprised.

Draco laughed. "'fraid not. She sent me a note to the effect that I was a lout and a scoundrel and she could do much better than me, thank you so much." He paused for a moment. "I understand the two of you are working together quite well now."

He could almost hear the dull blush sweeping up Vince's face. "Well... 's all right..." Vince mumbled, sounding a bit pleased. "She's got good ideas."

"Better than mine, probably. I never did get the hang of being devious. Or cunning. Not to the Slytherin Standard, anyway." It was less painful to admit now than it would have been before... although he never would, to anyone but Vince. "She'll boss you half to death, though."

"Don't mind," Vince mumbled sheepishly.

"Yeah, I'll bet." Draco snickered, and a heavy hand whacked him on the shoulder. "Hey!"

"You stop it." Vince sounded more relaxed than he had in a long time, and thus the next question caught Draco unprepared. "You're after Granger, now, aren't you?"

Bitter disappointment and loss, half-forgotten in the need to have his friend back, swept over Draco again. "No," he muttered. "Not anymore."

"Why?"

"She's interested in someone else. Found out tonight."

"Oh." There were no expressions of sympathy, and Draco was relieved. He didn't want sympathy, that would only make everything feel worse. "Probably for the best. Potter would've skinned you, anyway."

"He would've tried." Draco shrugged. "Of course, he and Weasley have an advantage. They outnumber me now."

A quite rumble of displeasure issued from Vince. "They been trying it on again? After you fought on their side?"

"I'm still a Slytherin. You know what they're like."

"Yeah." Vince sighed deeply and unconvincingly. "I s'pose I better start keeping an eye on you again. Can't trust those two to behave decent."

It was the closest thing Draco was going to get to 'all is forgiven' and he accepted it as such, reaching out to clap Vince gently on the shoulder. "Thanks."

"Forget it." Vince flicked the cigarette over the edge of the tower, tumbling like a tiny red falling star into the darkness. "Should get back inside. It's cold out here."

Hogwarts had far too many stairs. Far, far too many.

"Why couldn't I go to a flat school?" Hermione grumbled under her breath, leaning against the wall. It had seemed like such a simple thing - going up to the hospital wing to get more of the potion she took for heartburn, because her current supply was almost gone. In retrospect, she should have sent Dilly. Or waited for tomorrow.

Halfway back to her room, exhaustion had hit her like a big soft rock, and she'd found herself clinging to a stone banister with her head spinning. It had been a long day, even with Colin making sure she had time to rest, and suddenly her room felt horribly far away, and she was afraid to go down more stairs in case she got dizzy and fell.

She'd been stuck halfway down a flight of stairs for half an hour now. Curfew was well and truly past. If she got caught, there'd be trouble... but on the other hand, there'd also be someone to help her get back to her room, so she sort of hoped someone caught her soon.

"Mraaah!" Mrs Norris appeared at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at Hermione accusingly.

Gratitude for mushy Muggle catfood only went so far, it seemed. "Yes, I know I'm not supposed to be out," Hermione said wearily. "But I'm too tired to get back to my room. Please go get Mr Filch or someone?"

"Mrrrow." No less shrill, but slightly less accusing, and Mrs Norris whisked away with obliging speed. Barely a minute later, Hermione heard an approaching mumble, interspersed with shrill meows, and sighed in embarrassed relief.

"What are you doing sitting on the stairs at this hour?" For once, Mr Filch didn't sound gleeful about catching someone out. If anything, he sounded just a little concerned.

"I got dizzy," Hermione said, feeling sheepish. "I've overdone it a bit today, I think, and I was afraid to keep going in case I fell over. It'd be a shame to kill myself falling down the stairs after avoiding having someone else make me do it."

"You shouldn't be walking around the castle alone at this time of night," Mr Filch said disapprovingly, but he offered her a thin hand and pulled her to her feet with surprising strength. "Come on, then."

Hermione somehow found herself inching down the stairs with her arm tucked securely into that of the student-hating caretaker. She couldn't help asking. "No detention?"

"No. It's in the school rules," Mr Filch added hastily, as if to be sure she didn't get the idea that he might like her personally. "There's no punishment for students who have been hexed, cursed, injured, or otherwise rendered unable to return to their common-rooms by curfew, provided that their injuries are not self-inflicted through carelessness or stupidity."

"Well, I did sort of tire myself out." Hermione leaned gratefully on the offered arm. "But thank you. I certainly didn't want to sit out on the stairs all alone until someone happened to find me."

"Of course not." Mr Filch supported her without any apparent difficulty, Mrs Norris trotting along ahead of them and glancing back frequently to make sure they were keeping up. "Dizzy spells do happen in your condition."

"So do lots of things." Hermione scowled. "Like heartburn and varicose veins and fainting unexpectedly."

Mr Filch snorted, in what was probably an amused way. "Well, it can't be much longer now."

"Another month and a bit," Hermione said, looking down at her stomach sadly. Another month of getting bigger and bigger didn't sound at all appealing.

"It'll probably be early. First babies often are." This was clearly meant to be comforting, and Hermione decided not to inflict on him the long list of things that could go wrong for babies born early. "And don't think I won't give it detention if it runs around after curfew in eleven years."

"Of course you will." Hermione nodded seriously. "And then, even worse, you'll write to me and tell me all about it and I'll send a Howler."

"Oh." Mr Filch was silent for a moment, clearing his throat once or twice. "Yes, of course. Not that that ever stopped you and your little friends."

"Well, it didn't stop them. And if they'd gone off without me they might have burned the castle down." Hermione shuddered. "You don't want to know what they get up to without me or Ginny around to hold them back."

"Probably not." He was silent until they reached her door. "Well, here you are then."

"Here I am. Thank you, Mr Filch." She patted his thin arm, and he went mauve with what looked like pleased embarrassment. "I'll be more careful in future."

"See that you are." He nodded and hurried off. Mrs Norris rubbed up against Hermione's ankle and then followed.

"Well. That was... nice." Hermione smiled, and slipped into her room so Dilly could yell at her for not looking after herself.

"I wonder if Squibs were ever changelings," Hermione said thoughtfully, slicing valerian root into paper-thin sheets.

"What do you mean?" Severus had been a little stiff, when she'd first arrived at the potions laboratory this afternoon. Much more like the domineering teacher he'd been, as if he was trying to set aside the friendlier companionship they'd managed lately. His reserve had melted in an argument over the properties of foxglove, though, and he asked the question with apparent interest.

"I was thinking about Mr Filch. He helped me get back to my room the other night, when I had a dizzy spell on the stairs." Hermione stroked her stomach absently. "He was quite nice, for him. And I can't really blame him for being bitter - it must be horrible for him, having all these magical children running around treating him as if he's mobile furniture, and never having had any magic himself. I can't really blame him for resenting us."

"No." Severus nodded slowly. "He would certainly have been happier elsewhere. But there are few opportunities for employment for Squibs, in our world. I imagine he had to take what he could get."

Hermione nodded. "And I wondered if Squibs were ever changelings... you know, the Muggle stories about waking up to find a different baby in the cradle. Because it would make a nasty sort of sense, if you were a wizarding family with a Squib baby, to find a Muggle family with a wizard child and exchange them."

Severus nodded slowly. "If they were certain that the child was a Squib, and they could find one about the same age. A glamour on the new baby to disguise the difference, gradually adjusted so that the child simply seems to change as he or she grows older.."

"So nobody would ever have to know. Except the poor Muggle parents who woke up to find a different baby in the cradle where theirs had been." Hermione nodded. "Most of the stories about changelings have a strong, healthy child vanishing and a weak, sickly one taking its place."

"Probably both inbred and neglected, once its lack of magical potential was realised. Anyone who would simply abduct another child to replace their own probably wouldn't have lavished tender care on the disappointing child." Severus frowned. "It's entirely possible. The ability to produce healthy, magically gifted children was of paramount importance until quite recently, among wizards."

Hermione shuddered, cupping her stomach protectively with one hand. "It's a horrible thought. Just discarding your baby and stealing another one to take his place. But there are people who do things like that even now, for reasons that seem to make sense to them."

"It might explain the rise in the number of Squibs born in the twentieth century," Severus said, frowning as he ground dried foxglove blossoms with inattentive expertise. "The Ministry was beginning to regulate interactions with Muggles at around that time..."

"And Muggles were starting to keep track of things like infant mortality. Abducting some farmer's child that hardly anyone else had even seen was one thing, but drawing attention by a rash of mysterious kidnappings that the parents could prove had happened..."

"Would have been frowned upon, yes." He set the foxglove blossoms aside and leaned against the bench, frowning. "There has been speculation that the rising numbers of Squibs... not a large number, even now, but an increased percentage... is a result of inbreeding within too small a population. If our speculation is correct, there may have been no increase at all, merely an increase in the number who survived to be counted."

"It could be a little of both." Hermione watched him covertly. He was far more relaxed now than he ever was in public, slouching comfortably as he propped a hip against the bench. "If our speculation is correct, Muggle-borns were probably introduced into even the purest of wizarding lines, either as substitutes for insufficiently gifted children or brought in as spouses after being sneaked into another 'suitable' family. Repugnant as the idea is, it would have given a measure of protection against genetic stagnation, especially since the stories say that only strong, healthy, attractive babies were taken."

"Regular introductions of healthy peasant stock into the overbred pure-blood lines." Severus chuckled sardonically. "You'd get lynched if you ever suggested it to some of them. It would explain how they survived for so long, though. Most aristocracies breed themselves out of viability within a few hundred years. Even with the longer wizard lifespan, most of the old pure-blooded families have held on with surprising strength until quite recently."

"It'd be fascinating to do a really in-depth genealogical study," Hermione said, valerian root forgotten now. "Into the family histories and so on. There'd probably be patterns... several mysterious still-births or early deaths followed by a single healthy child, for example. Or cases where the usual strong family resemblance skipped a generation or two, or vanished entirely."

He laughed suddenly, and shook his head when she gave him a startled look. "Hermione, do you ever have a thought that doesn't lead you to the need for research?"

His voice was as warm as she'd ever heard it, amused without being the slightest bit disparaging, and that had much more to do with Hermione's sudden blush than his actual question. "Er... not really. I'm never content with just speculation; I want to know about things."

"So I've noticed." He shook his head, actually grinning. "Very well. In the spirit of continuing research, do you know why you are slicing that root instead of cubing it?"

Hermione returned the grin. "Because if I cubed it, it would take too long to cook through and the knarl quills would have lost their potency by the time it was ready."

"Precisely. The interaction between ingredients is as important as their innate properties..." He began to lecture, and Hermione settled down happily to listen.

Severus was getting worried.

Akilah had been inside his locked, warded bedroom when he went to bed, curled up on his pillow. After a brief altercation over the ownership of said pillow, she had stalked off; he'd assumed to sleep in his sock drawer and shed all over it again.

When he got up, she wasn't anywhere in his rooms. He opened every cupboard and drawer just to check, and she had definitely found some mysterious means of walking through two locked doors and a section of stone wall. And was gone. He was almost completely certain that Kneazles couldn't actually get lost, but it was a very large castle, and it was frosty outside, and he wasn't sure how Mrs Norris would feel about the intruder.

After he'd had two cups of tea and searched his rooms again, he gave in and scraped enough of her shed fur off his socks for a proper locating-charm. It was early enough that nobody was likely to see him making a fool of himself over a pet, and she was still very young and might have wandered off anywhere.

Not anywhere, as it turned out, but to Hermione Granger's bedroom. Worry evaporated in the heat of annoyance, and he was scowling when he knocked on the door. He and Hermione had talked too long and too freely last night, leaving him unable to drive her from his thoughts (and later, his dreams), and Akilah had clearly sneaked off to her on purpose to annoy him.

"I'm coming..." Hermione called, and a minute later she opened the door, yawning. "Oh, hello," she said, smiling up at him sleepily. "Looking for someone?"

For a second or two of eternity, he couldn't answer. Hermione was flushed with sleep, her hair hanging in a soft braid and her nightgown baring neck and collarbone to his eyes before gathering over her breasts and softly draping the heavy swell of her stomach. He had never seen her so beautiful, and he ached to reach out to her. "Yes," he managed, his voice somehow remaining quite level. "She and I had a disagreement last night, and she went off in a sulk."

Hermione laughed. "I thought that might be it. Crooks does that to me, too." She turned away, and the soft nape of her neck and smooth line of her shoulders struck him breathless and speechless again. She gathered Akilah up out of the tangle of blankets on her bed, cuddling the half-grown Kneazle tenderly. "Did you go off in a sulk and abandon him? That wasn't very nice, Aki, making him worry."

Akilah was purring as Hermione carried her back to the doorway, and Severus reached out for her mechanically. "It was my pillow," he said firmly, taking refuge in talking to the Kneazle because he didn't dare even look Hermione in the eye just yet. "I will not apologize for removing you from it." Akilah stopped purring and gave him a disgusted look. "I will buy you your own pillow," he conceded, and was rewarded with a resumption of the purring.

"Crooks and I had that argument." Hermione smiled up at him. "I was the one who wound up getting a new pillow. But you're much stronger willed than I am."

His strong will moved him to finish the conversation politely and somehow get back to his rooms without losing his composure. There he dropped Akilah on a chair and glared at her. "You did that on purpose," he accused. Akilah washed her paws, pointedly ignoring him. "You took me there to... to see her, then, this morning, on purpose!"

He'd wanted nothing more than to gather her into his arms. He knew she wasn't beautiful, she never had been, but to his eyes there could have been no-one more so when she opened that door. With a heartfelt groan he slumped into the chair at his desk, and buried his head in his hands. After a moment, a small weight with tiny paws slid up into his lap, and a wet nose was pushed inquisitively against his chin. Mechanically, he lowered a hand to stroke her. "I am a fool," he whispered, and Akilah nuzzled his cheek consolingly. "I am a sentimental idiot who should hate her for the liberties she has taken with my life and my person, and instead I am as besotted with her as any other sad, lonely middle-aged man could be with a lovely young girl I have no right to yearn for."

Akilah purred, rubbing her face against his, and he closed his eyes tightly. I love her. I want her. And I must never let her know, because I'd rather throw myself in the lake and drown than have her pity me.