A/N: I have a drawn example of what a Siplia (the animal that Harry was hunting in Chapter 5) is supposed to look like. It's not the best, considering my drawing ability isn't that... y'know... good, but it does give a pretty decent type of reference. Since I can't link it here, I will just say that it's at deviantArt, and you could just search 'siplia' in dA's search bar, and it should be the deer looking thing with the blue background.
Chapter 7
"Look, I've already told you that it isn't a word he'd normally use. I should know!" Charlie argued.
"I've heard him use it in conversation before plenty of times, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't repeat use of a word make it something a person would use normally?" Percy demanded with a huff.
"Not in letters. Yeah he says it when he's talking all the time, but he rarely ever writes it, and when he does it's usually in the context of something that someone else has said." Charlie tried.
Harry blinked as he heard the conversation when he, Severus, and Alden floo'd back in. He sure hoped Draco knew what he was doing when he paired those two together. "Severus, where were you?"
"There was an incident, but it's taken care of." The man replied, ensuring that his robe sleeve, which was of the very rarely seen on him, 'loose' variety, covered the bandages.
"Well get back over there and start deciphering with what they have so far." Draco ordered. Ron came back in with Hermione, who was looking around curiously and slightly confused. This elicited a groan from the young Lord Malfoy. "You didn't even tell her what was going on, did you?"
"Uhh, no. It would have taken too much time and I didn't want to make everybody wait." Ron answered.
Draco rolled his eyes. "Bill's missing, everyone's gotten letters from him that are off, and we need your brains paired with Uncle Sev's to figure out why he's using words in those letters that he wouldn't normally."
Hermione gave a small shake of her head. "See Ronald? That wasn't so hard to explain, and you could have done that before you started dragging me off to the floo rambling on about people and orders."
"Right. Ron, you head back to the Burrow and see if there's another parchment addressed to Molly or Arthur. Hermione, over there with Severus. Harry, you help Fleur because it's starting to look like she can't handle Teddy on her own. Everybody got it?"
The three nodded and went off to their various tasks. Harry smiled lightly when he saw Teddy run past then nearly tumble as he stopped, turned around, and ran to Harry. "What in Merlin's name are you two doing?" He asked as Fleur caught up and took a small breather.
"I tried to put 'im down for a nap, but ze little boy ran." She said tossing her hands into the air.
"Flou try make me sleep! Teddy no sleep!" The toddler stated assuredly as he clung to Harry's legs.
"Ohhh I see. Don't worry Fleur, it wasn't your fault, Teddy's been rather against the idea of sleeping for a while now. Though why I don't know." Harry commented.
"Scary." Teddy told him as if he should have known.
"What's scary?" Harry asked, crouching down and scooping the boy up.
"Sleep scary." Teddy told him.
"Is the dark what makes sleep scary?" Harry asked the toddler. He was starting to become concerned.
"No."
Harry wrinkled his forehead, more than a bit confused, until he thought about the recent nighttime events that had been happening. "Was it a bad dream?"
"Wha?"
Harry was at a loss. Teddy didn't know what a dream was, and every time he tried to explain it, he couldn't seem to get the child to understand what he meant. The concept of reality being different from imagination hadn't been formed yet. He resolved then to stay by Teddy the next time he slept and watch him to see if he could observe any signs of a nightmare and possibly keep the child from being scared of sleeping in the future.
What was with all of the nightmares recently? Alden had three within the last 2 weeks, Severus two, himself two, and now it was a possibility that Teddy was having them as well. Something just wasn't right about all of this, but Harry simply couldn't solve the issue as he had no idea what was causing it. He wound up letting Teddy curl up beside him while the boy watched the chaos that was unfolding in Malfoy Manor, and the young man finally tuned back in to the conversations around him.
(¯`·. Hp/Ss .·´¯)
Days had passed, Harry and Severus were back at Hogwarts pretty much staying out of the Bill situation as they had nothing more to contribute. Severus and Hermione had deduced that Bill's letters to everyone were simply phrased that way to let them know that something was wrong, and hadn't been a deep sort of message. The twins - after they'd located and updated the Weasleys Senior - and Charlie tried the point me spell, but that had gone haywire and instead of pointing them in one general direction, it caused their wands to spin like the handles on a clock.
Harry had missed his Sunday romp, as he was busy at Malfoy Manor trying to help, and sent a note of apology to Macoval explaining the situation. The werewolf reminded him that they are very good trackers, and because of all the help that he'd put in to their clan in the last year, he would be extraordinarily willing to allow 2-3 of his best males to help the crew locate the missing Weasley, as long as no harm came to those males from paranoid wizards within the crew bent on locating them.
Of course Harry passed on the message to Charlie through Draco, and the young man said he would think about it. The twins got wind of this and said it was a wonderful idea, but Charlie, who hadn't been around Remus all that much when the man was alive, only had what the wizarding world socialites had told him of werewolves to go on. Draco had to remind him that Harry had spent nearly a year with them and came out unscathed. Charlie, however, was still unsure. He agreed to meet with Macoval and Harry, more to get Draco off of his back than anything. He didn't really see himself associating with werewolves.
The week had flown by, Harry working with Minerva to choose one of the charities suggested by the students for the Halloween ball, and Severus taking over the younger man's detentions while he scuttled around trying to set everything up for said ball, which would be held in 10 days time from today.
Today was the day that Harry introduced Charlie to Macoval, and he had a plan. Said plan was currently toddling beside him, gripping tightly to his hand and looking around in a confused manner. "Daddy? Why here?"
"To wait on Uncle Charlie and Macoval to get here." Harry told the boy.
"Unca Chawelery like Mac?"
"Well I should hope he turns out to." The deep baritone of the werewolf called out as he approached them.
Teddy looked up at the man and squealed. He quite liked this man, but he didn't know why. He just liked the way he smelled. "Up!" He demanded reaching his arms out. Macoval sought confirmation that came in the form of a nod from Harry, and scooped the toddler up, settling him on his lap while he took a seat in the eatery. Harry took that time to go up to the bar and order their food.
That was the scene that Charlie walked in on. Macoval with Teddy on his lap, the boy fiddling with the man's necklace and getting scolded when he tried to pull the man's hair, and Harry heading back to the table with their slip of parchment that he placed in the center which would be replaced by the food when it was ready.
The young Weasley had thought to watch their interaction for a minute before he went up to them, but what he didn't know was that both men had already known he was there. Teddy didn't know, but he would have had he not been so enthralled with Macoval's necklace.
"I still have a hard time believing that all of us has some sort of innate magic." The werewolf commented while Charlie walked up.
"Well muggles can't turn into werewolves, they die on their first transformation, so your clan, and every other clan out there, has to be witches and wizards." Harry told him, flicking his hand and pulling out a chair for Charlie and giving a welcoming nod, who sat down as prompted.
"I've been told that the first werewolf was a result of a dark spell gone wrong and it affected the blood of the wizard who had cast it, and as a result could only be successfully transferred to another magical person." The red head offered. "And that over the years it mutated kind of like a disease would so that it was transferable via any bodily fluids."
Macoval thought about this seriously for a moment. "And you say some witches and wizards are born without magic?"
"Yes, those we call squibs." Harry added.
"Well, it would explain the thus-far unexplainable deaths of some of our newborns come their first full moon." The man considered.
Charlie was curious about something else, and he figured this was the chance he was going to have to find out, so he asked. "So even though you know about the wizarding world and the Wolfsbane potion, why do you and your clan still refuse to take it?"
"Very simple really. We don't feel the need to restrain ourselves. We do not live in a heavily populated area, in fact the nearest settlement is a small wizarding community some 70 miles or more away." Teddy reached up for the man's hair again but instead found his little hand caught in his victim's mouth. Charlie was absolutely terrified, Teddy was confused, and Harry, who had seen this type of thing in the clan during his visit, seemed to not mind in the least. Macoval let out a small growl, not something very threatening but enough to let the toddler know he meant business, and to everyone's surprise, Teddy responded by growling back.
"What in the world?" Harry asked staring at the boy.
Macoval blinked slightly while the boy pinched his lip and startled him into pulling his head back, much to Teddy's delight. "Are you positively sure he's not transformed?"
"Absolutely, Severus would have told me if he had while I was gone, and I've been with him during his other full moons with nothing noteworthy happening." Harry responded.
"What in the hell just happened? Why did you bite him?" Charlie demanded half frenzied and half horrified.
Macoval raised an eyebrow. "I did no such thing. I caught his fingers in my mouth and growled to assert dominance, and if you weren't paying attention, he did not cry, yelp, or do anything that indicated pain of any sort, instead he growled right back at me."
Harry saw that the explanation wasn't going to be enough for the red head, so he supplied more. "When a werewolf in human form does that, they cover their teeth with their lips so as not to hurt the child and they barely put any pressure on them. It's roughly the same amount of pressure you use when you're holding Draco's hand during a lazy afternoon. Nearly nonexistent, just enough to let you know something's there."
Charlie looked at the happily squealing baby and leaned back some in an attempt to relax. Truth be told, he remembered seeing his mother doing such things when Ron and Gi-... right... she wasn't supposed to be talked about anymore. When Ron was a baby. It wasn't just a werewolf thing if normal wizarding families did it too. "Fine." He replied shortly.
"Why did you ask if he'd transformed before?" Harry wondered.
"Although I've not had much experience with wizards before you came along, I had never heard of a non-werewolf child growling back like that."
"Perhaps he was simply mimicking you." Harry oddered.
"Perhaps... we shall see though." He covered the toddler's ears. "May we possibly get one of the other patrons of this place to grab your arm suddenly and have you yelp out as if in pain to gauge the child's reaction?" He asked, uncovering the boy's ears.
"Why not have one of us do it?" Charlie inquired.
"If he sees one of us do it, he might start to distrust us and that isn't what we want to happen." Macoval explained.
Harry nodded and glanced around looking for someone who might be willing to do so and wound up asking a wizard who looked to be about 40-something. He had to bribe the man with 5 galleons, but he wound up saying yes. They came back while the food popped in to place, and Harry sat down. Teddy was sat facing the two while the man wandered around seemingly looking at wall hangings and Harry cast a silencing charm.
The stranger walked by, grabbed Harry on the arm lightly to which he responded by yelping out and recoiling. What was unexpected though, was that Teddy growled at the man, and not in the playful way he'd growled at Macoval earlier. The little toddler's growl sounded quite a bit more deadly than any toddler's growl should by Charlie's standards, and the child bore his teeth at the man which morphed into sharp fangs identical to those of a werewolf's. The man promptly emitted a shaky high pitched noise and ran away with Harry's money in his pocket.
When the man fled the establishment, Teddy gave a small half growl half snap towards the door and morphed his teeth back into their normal state while his hair transformed into a bright orange color and his attention focused on the food. Harry suddenly had a thought. "What if his inherited metamorphmagus genes counteracts the forced transformations some how? Like, what if he did transform his very first full moon, but because of the metamorphmagus genes was able to turn back to what he knew was normal?"
"What precisely does this meta gene allow him to do, aside from switch hair colors nearly constantly?" Macoval asked.
"He can add and subtract extra fingers from his hands." Charlie supplied.
"His mum could morph her facial structure into that of most animals, and her body structure into any type of person or combination of people she chose." Harry added. "But she had to study the animal structures before she could do those."
"So if he does transform during the full moon, but transforms back thanks to what he knows is normal, is it possible he could have forwent the studying of the structure of a werewolf's teeth to be able to do that?" Macoval wondered.
"Well it makes sense, aside from the whole 'werewolves lose their mind while they're transformed' deal. If he had transformed he would have lost his human mind and shouldn't have been able to realize what was normal." Harry thought aloud while he piled pizza on to their plates.
The rest of the meal was spent with Charlie and Macoval talking amongst themselves, the former of the two slowly coming to terms with the fact that his previous notions of werewolves in human form were terribly wrong. They spoke on Teddy and possible theories surrounding his rather surprising revelation today, and Harry promised to get back to the visiting werewolf if he found out anything new.
(¯`·. Hp/Ss .·´¯)
Severus stared blankly at his husband who had just just asked him the oddest question. "Is this a joke of some sort?"
"What? No. Why would you say that?"
"Well you must admit, 'How does a werewolf who doesn't take Wolfsbane not lose his mind during a transformation' sounds like an opening to a bad joke."
"It was a legitimate question, I truly want to know." Harry said with some exasperation.
"Why?"
And so Harry spent the next 40 minutes relaying the conversation from the restaurant. "-so it all fits, except for the losing his mind part. Maybe his mum or dad did something during her pregnancy that made it... I don't know, something."
A thought struck Severus. "Mrs. Lupin did take Wolfsbane alongside her husband during the full moons as a precautionary effort. Neither of them knew if a baby werewolf would transform within the womb during the full moon or not, so it was some off-the-wall thing suggested by Madame Tonks to keep them from 'fritzing' as they called it. I know this because they doubled the order for about 6 months."
"So wait... Tonks had Wolfsbane in her system during most of her pregnancy even though she wasn't a werewolf? Did they not worry about it doing something to the child, or her?" Harry demanded.
"Oh yes, they worried, they also did lots of research, asked lots of questions, most of which I couldn't answer, and spoke with several wizards who had studied werewolves for most of their lives. In the end they decided to go with it and hope it worked if Teddy turned out to be a werewolf."
Harry shook his head a bit then stopped suddenly. "Wait... Wait, Tonks took it during 2/3 of her pregnancy... is it possible that thanks to all of the Wolfsbane introduced to Teddy during his development that it may have somehow... I don't know, became a permanent fixture in him?"
Severus thought about this for a few moments then shrugged. "I haven't a clue."
"Well how do we find out?"
"Again, I haven't a clue." Severus sighed. "This is uncharted territory. Yes werewolves born to one werewolf parent and one wizarding parent have been studied thanks to the registration laws, but to our knowledge there has never been a werewolf born to a werewolf and a metamorphmagus. To our knowledge this is a first in history and I wouldn't be surprised if once the boy's biological parentage came out wizards would want to study him and be filled in on his life until that point."
"I'm not too fond of the thought of random witches and wizards studying my son." Harry commented with crossed arms.
"Nor am I." Severus concurred. "We shall cross that bridge if the time comes."
"Do you never have an exit strategy?" Harry asked, not realizing until it was too late that he might have said the wrong thing judging by the look Snape was giving him. "I mean, that's not to say that things don't normally work out, just-"
"Do you really want to know that answer?"
"What... what do you mean?"
"I mean are you prepared to know the answer to a question you didn't think all the way through."
"You're making a bit of a big deal out of this. I'd simply asked because you always seem to say that we'll deal with things when they come about and make no plans."
"Yes, I do have exit strategies. I always have an exit strategy. If I do not have one before something comes up, then I form one within days of it coming up and revise it over the course of the next few weeks. No, I did not have an exit strategy for the possibility of people demanding to study Teddy, but rest assured that within the next week I will have formed one and began revision on it to make sure it would work." Severus explained.
"On everything?"
"Everything."
"Holidays going awry?"
"Yes."
"The possibility of the Wolfsbane improvement attempt poisoning your volunteer?"
"Yes."
"Oi, that sounds awful. I'd hate to have to come up with an exit strategy for that." Harry commented curling up on the couch and wondering what he was going to do tomorrow for his 5th year Slytherins and Ravenclaws. They had been doing superbly together lately and he wanted to reward them for the effort they- wait... Everything? "Our marriage?"
Harry's question met silence. His brows shifted into a worried fashion as he studied Severus' face. Finally the man spoke. "Everything."
It felt like his world was closing in on him. Severus had went into this marriage with a plan should it fail. Harry hadn't even considered the possibility of its failure. How could the man have done this? How could he sit there night after night and claim to love Harry, when in the back of his head he had a plan to run away from their life together should things go south? "Why?"
"Because it's how I keep myself alive, sans that time you saved me from that blasted snake. That was the one time I didn't have an exit strategy as I was ready to die."
"Why with us? What's your exit plan?" Harry demanded, choosing to ignore his comment about dying.
"With us because anything has the possibility to go under. My plan revolves around how it might go under. If it's a small enough problem, a short separation should be adequate. If it's something that can not be solved without our permanent splitting, I shall leave and you and the children shall take the manor and house-elves."
"You... You'd leave? Just like that over some argument?" Harry couldn't believe his ears.
"No, if it were simply an argument, I'd stay and yell at you for a while, assume you'd yell back, and we'd work on figuring it out. Leaving is a worse-case scenario."
"Like what?"
"Like you tiring of me or falling in love with someone else." Severus admitted. "Everything else I'm fairly sure we could work out."
"Your ultimate exit strategy... revolves around my leaving you?"
"No, my ultimate exit strategy revolves around your, Alden, and Teddy's deaths."
"You... wait... What?"
"If you, Alden, and Teddy were to die, sufficed to say I would not see much of a point in living myself."
Now Harry really couldn't believe his ears. His worries about the man leaving him of his own accord had been put to rest, but they'd been replaced by worries of the man ending his own life at the loss of his family.
Severus seemed to see this worry and sought to put the young man's mind at ease... as truthfully as he could. "Mind you that is in the event that you all perish not just one of you, one or more of you do not stay around in ghost form, and Minerva leaves me alone for more than 5 minutes, which she undoubtedly wouldn't do. I'd be promoted to Deputy Headmaster so I would always have to be under her foot so fast the entire student population's heads would spin."
"You're getting promoted as Deputy Headmaster?" Alden asked sleepily walking into the sitting portion of their chambers.
"Not likely any time soon, and if I were it would be against my will." Severus informed the boy. Augh, saved from an agonizing conversation with Harry ab-
"Severus, why? If all of that were to happen I would want you to go on and be happy." Harry stated seriously, not bothering to stop the conversation simply because Alden was in the room.
The older wizard sighed and glanced to the confused 14 year old then back to Harry. "Because I wouldn't be happy if all of that happened. I am happy with where I am now. I've a family that loves me, several members of which I never thought in a million years I would refer to as family, namely you and the Weasleys. How could you expect me to go on knowing that the one person who gave me a reason to not end it all was gone forever, then the two people who later came into our lives and gave me more reason to live were taken from me permanently as well?"
Alden blinked suddenly. "This is one of those deep meaningful adult conversations that I really shouldn't be listening to, isn't it?"
"You're old enough to hear if that's what you're worried about." Harry told the boy. "It's one of those conversations that began with my being stupid and butting in where my nose didn't belong. By the way, why aren't you sleeping in your dorm anymore?"
"You guys said I could sleep here if I wanted." Alden commented sheepishly.
"Yes, but we hadn't expected it to turn into a nightly routine. Not that you're not welcome, because you most certainly are and we've no problem with it at all. It's just worried me."
"Severus charmed the dorms to block magic from people under the age of 18 and now that I'm having frequent nightmares I quite like to keep a silencing barrier around my bed so I don't keep waking everybody else up with my screams. I can't do that there, but here I can."
"Your nightmares are that bad that you're waking up screaming?" Harry asked slightly astonished.
"Sometimes..."
Severus sighed. "Those charms were put into place to keep randy teenagers from having sex within the dormitories. If you had simply asked-"
"I wouldn't. It would be favoritism, and then other students would see me casting magic around my bed and may try to use nightmares as an excuse to go off and get... well... you know." Alden blushed a little. Really, 12 am was not the time to be having a conversation about sex with your parents.
"That doesn't matter." Harry stated most annoyed. "What matters is you're having nightmares that wake you up screaming with frequency. What's going on to make that happen?"
"I have no idea. Sometimes they're about things that are happening in life in the present, other times they're memories of things that have happened, and then other times they're just off the wall crazy nonsensical nightmares about things that could never happen."
"Why doesn't it seem to matter that he's using silencing charms for this?" Severus asked.
"Because he's being considerate of others." Harry commented. When he received a strange look from his lover he expanded on that statement. "When I was in school I had nightmares all the time thanks to good old Voldemort invading my mind whenever he damn well pleased. You've no idea just how much of those death eater meetings I saw Severus, and I saw more than enough to know exactly what went on." Severus paled, if that was even possible with his pasty complexion. "Yes, I even saw what you had done. Don't give me that look, that's not my point. My point is that those nightmares, or night-visions as Hermione dubbed them, would send me into a state of terror and on nearly a tri-weekly basis I would wake up screaming. After I'd woken up the entire dorm four times, I thought to use a silencing charm since the nightmares couldn't be stopped, and everyone was quite a bit more satisfied when that happened."
"While you may not have had someone then to wake you before you got to the screaming point, you have someone now, and I will not tolerate you, or Alden, using silencing charms to cover up your nightmares." Both of the others looked appropriately ashamed and Severus narrowed his eyes at his husband. "You've been using silencing charms since we've began this relationship, haven't you?"
"I'd rather not answer that if I don't have to." Harry told the man.
"In other words, yes." Severus hissed. Really, did the young men actually think that their nightmares weren't important? Even he knew it was best when someone was there to bring you out of a nightmare state instead of dealing with it on your own. "No more silencing charms from you two for the use of nightmares."
Alden blinked slightly confused. "Why do you keep specifying for nightmares? We already realize that."
"Think boy. Screams are not the only thing silencing charms are used for covering up." Severus snapped.
Alden's eyes flew wide open. "Oh ew, I didn't want to think about that between you two. Oh Merlin."
Harry laughed outright at this while Severus simply raised an eyebrow. The younger of the two addressed the teen. "I think he was actually talking about you."
"But I don't have a girlfriend, and if I did I wouldn't bri- oh... Oh. Oh! No! Ew! How can you even... I don't... Augh!" Alden's hands flew to his head and he held it as if he were drunk and trying to steady himself.
Harry was cracking up. For a conversation that had started off so solemn and serious, it had sure turned amusing. "Really, don't be so surprised." He stated with a chuckle. "Just because we're parents and professors doesn't mean we don't realize what you lot do. In case you've forgotten, we were in your position before."
"Oh my god!" Alden screeched. "Please don't use wording like that."
"Really, you don't seem to have a hard time talking about these things with Fred and George." Severus commented off-handedly.
"How did you know I'd asked them questions?" Alden squeaked.
"Other than the fact that you just admitted it, because we asked them to make themselves available to you in that area should you feel the need to ask something along those lines of someone you trust." The dark wizard stated.
"And since they act the most like teenagers of all of us, they were the ones we'd chosen because they'd be most relate-able." Harry offered.
Alden simply stared blankly at the two then shook his head. "I think I'm going to go fall asleep and when I wake up, I'm going to pretend this conversation was a nightmare."
"Right, good luck with that." Harry commented. "I had a hell of a time trying to forget it when Minerva gave us all 'the in-depth talk'."
"Why would Aunt Minnie do that?" Alden wondered from the hallway.
"Part of the fourth-year curriculum." Severus informed him. "When the students return from the Christmas holidays, each fourth-year class is pulled aside by their head of house the first evening and given a sort of lecture on sex, though it's not nearly as in depth as the name suggests since the one most children receive from their family some time after their 17th birthday covers quite a lot more ground."
Alden let out another noncommittal noise, quite mortified at the prospect of having Severus lecture all of the fourth-year Slytherins. He stalked off to his room mumbling about Christmas being too close as it was only 2 months and a week away. Perhaps he could talk Fred and George into giving him some of that candy that made people sick and skip that speech.