A/N: Thank you for the reviews! Right, enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Seventeen

While Helena was incredibly happy and relieved that St Mungo's had agreed to let her back in, healing was proving to be exhausting. Learning the spells was fascinating, the potions likewise, but she never seemed to stop. Training comprised of two days a week in the hospital's seminar/lecture theatre, sat with Lily listening avidly to one of the senior consultant healers speak at length about animal bites, or mental health, or the best way to treat an entrail-expelling curse victim (the answer to that one turned out to be: quickly). The first year junior healers were expected to have a through grounding in all elements of magical medicine, which would be followed by a three-month rotation in each one of the wards. For this year they would be studying creature bites and animal attacks, something Helena was particularly interested in. Into this category fell animagus transformations which had gone wrong—she quickly learnt these cases were even more grotesque than the pictures in the books at Hogwarts. Still, she was good at Transfiguration, and proved to be skilled at taking people back to their human forms. A few, sadly, would never be quite the same again—she had had one particularly unfortunate patient who had been sent home covered in bright green scales, but other than that she had a pretty high success rate.

Less funny were those witches and wizards who came in with serious injuries. Considering how rare they were supposed to be, she saw an awful lot of dragon bites and burns in the first month or so. It didn't make sense to her, until Lily looked it up; July to September was dragon mating season. All of the male Welsh Greens were rampaging around the Brecon Beacons in high temper, biting or burning anything that wasn't a female Welsh Green, which unfortunately meant a lot of dragon watchers were in a lot of danger.

"It's a bit like muggle bird watchers," Lily remarked. "They're called twitchers."

"Really?"

"Mmmm. I was wondering what the dragon watchers are called."

Helena quirked a scornful eyebrow. "Idiots."

The man whose upper leg she was dousing with anti-toxin—at this time of year the males excreted a toxin that made the females sleepy and docile, but would kill any other animal—gave her a glare, which she returned unrepentantly. Once she'd finished swabbed the puncture marks with ultraviolet liquid, she stepped aside for Lily to finish bandaging him him. Lighting her wand, Helena shone the tip into his eyes, checking that his irises were now returning to their normal colour. They were, the yellow draining away to be replaced by brown.

"Tongue."

He stuck it out, and the black warts were also already gone. The Head Healer on the ward tapped Helena on the shoulder. Recognising the cue to get out of the way, Helena did so, stepping aside to let Octavia Fantine look over her patient. She did the same checks Helena just had, and looked over Lily's bandages before giving an approving nod.

"Your anti-toxin was obviously brewed correctly, Helena, well done. And Lily, this knot is fine, but in future you might find a reef knot might hold for longer."

They both nodded, and Octavia looked at her watch, then around the ward. It was relatively empty tonight. "I think you've done enough for today—I'll see you on Friday."

Lily beamed, looking forward to the prospect of two days off. "Oh thank you, Octavia."

She nodded. "Goodnight, girls."

The yawns began almost as soon as they left the ward. They were both exhausted, and it was small wonder. Days began at eight a.m. exactly, either on the ward or in the lecture theatre, and they had half an hour for lunch at one p.m., unless they were on the wards in which case they snatched water and food whenever opportunity presented itself (which was rarely). Days didn't finish until at least six, sometimes seven or eight in the evening. As a result, Helena went almost directly from the hospital to bed, and now existed for her days off. They weren't normally weekends, as healers had to work all hours.

At least she didn't have it as bad as Lily though, since she didn't have a fiancé to spend time with, or a wedding to plan. So far the only thing that had been settled on that score was 'small'. Small, and fairly quick. As James had said when he proposed, there was no point wasting opportunities in times like these, but more personally than that, it sadly didn't look like his father was going to live for much longer. There were few diseases that the muggle and wizarding world shared, but inoperable cancer was one of them. No matter how many times the healers removed tumours from his lungs, they kept growing back. And now the cancer had spread to his bones, liver, heart and brain. It was a matter of weeks now until James no longer had a father. Both he and Lily were adamant that he would be there for their wedding, so it was likely to be in late August or early September.

Thankfully her own love life, as far as it went, still offered all she needed it to: lots of sex and not much else. The strange show of tenderness Sirius had give her a couple of weeks ago hadn't made a reappearance, and Helena wasn't sure if she was relieved or not. Now that they were living together it had become obvious that there was something he wasn't telling her, and that bothered her, but the rest of her life was so hectic that there wasn't room to worry about their relationship. The sex was still unfailingly satisfying for both, of course, but he was proving himself not a bad housemate either. Helena did all the cooking, which on the surface of it might have seemed unfair, except from somewhere she'd developed an amazing level of culinary knowledge and skill. Exactly who had trained her in classical French cuisine she had no idea—the when had obviously happened during the missing six months—but she- rocked.

That evening, for instance, she'd made canon of lamb with a red wine reduction, dauphinoise potatoes and summer vegetables, which Sirius was finishing off with noises that indicated he wasn't so much eating it as he was…enjoying something else entirely.

Sipping at her wine, Helena shook her head. "Get a room, Padfoot."

"I would get a room with this dinner," he replied, licking his cutlery.

"You're disgusting."

"You're phenomenal. Seriously, Hellfire, you rock at the cooking thing."

She acknowledged that with a gracious nod and gestured to the pans on the stove and in the sink. "Well, then you can rock at the washing up thing, can't you?"

"You're a cruel woman, you know that?"

"And your landlady," she reminded him. She stood, stretching. It wasn't late, but she was so exhausted that it didn't really matter. She wished him goodnight and headed upstairs, crawling into bed half an hour later with a long, happy sigh. She was asleep within moments.

Tap, tap, tap.

Helena turned over, away from the annoying noise, and snuggled deeper into her pillows.

Tap, tap, tap.

Well now it was irritating. Louder, as if whatever it was was getting pissed off with her for being asleep in her own bed.

Tap, tap, tap!

Groaning, she threw back the covers and stumbled over to the window, where the noise was emanating from. She pulled back the curtains, only to blink in surprise. Outside perched on her windowsill was Seraph. She a scroll tied to her leg. Frowning, Helena unlatched the window and slid it up. The owl hopped onto the proffered forearm quickly, and then held still while Helena took the scroll from her. She took Seraph down to the kitchen, pouring some water into a cup and getting some leftover roast chicken out of the fridge for her while Helena read whatever it was she'd brought.

It turned out to be a letter from her mother: short and brief but expressing a longing to see her. Apparently Narcissa had not turned out to be as much a replacement for Helena as she'd hoped, and Veronique wanted to meet up and begin the process of reconciliation. Even more surprising was the fact that Helena found she was seriously considering it. She'd no desire to be welcomed back into the suffocating bosom of her family, but would seeing her mother again be really so terrible?

"Yes," Sirius said flatly when she told him about the letter. "It's been seven months, Hellfire, you've clearly forgotten how much you hate her."

She glared. "I realise I've forgotten a lot over the last six months, Padfoot, but I don't think that's one of them. I hate my brother and I hate my father, but aside from the odd catty comment, Mother didn't do much to me except get drunk all the time, and that I can handle."

His eyebrows got lost in his hairline they rose that high. "You're seriously telling me you miss her?"

"No. But neither would it be the worst thing in the world to see her again. Look, she says that thing about… 'I now understand how trapped you must have been feeling; without your presence the house has become quite dreary and devoid of life. Your father and brother have become utterly tiresome and there is little pleasurable female company to be found in your sister-in-law'. That actually sounds like she might be coming to her senses!"

"Yeah, sounds like it—but I bet you anything she just wants to get you onside and then you'll find that she's got some marriage lined up for you."

"Then I'll leave and never go back again, but on the off-chance she isn't…"

"It's a bad idea," he said flatly.

She sighed. "You're probably right."

"Yes I am. Now come back to bed."

She laughed and let the scroll roll shut. "That's your solution to everything."

He moved behind her, hands on her waist and kissing up her neck. She tilted her head to give him better access with a long sigh. "It's a cure-all," he breathed lowly into her ear.

She turned to face him. "You should know there's no such thing."

"I'll let you be the judge of that."

He kissed her, burying his fingers in her hair, tongue questing for hers. Helena put her hands on his, walking them back to the bed. She flicked the book on the mattress out of the way; it was the kama sutra, a book that she'd decided she owed a lot. Mentally, she flicked through its pages and came up with one that put an instant grin on her face. They faced each other, both on their knees. Helena leaned forward and kissed him again, trapping his bottom lip between her teeth and sucking lightly. One hand gripped his shoulder to keep him where he was while her other hand moved down over his chest, stomach to finally curl around his cock, pumping up and down slowly. He groaned into her mouth, his hands doing much the same; one resting on her hip while the fingers of his right hand went down to circle her clit, thrumming so lightly it almost drove her mad, the electrifying sensation there one moment and gone the next. When he moved down to her dripping core, she drew in a sharp breath, her own fingers tightening just slightly on him. Their eyes locked, each of them refusing to look away. Helena was now relying almost entirely on him to keep from slumping over. All her strength seemed to have deserted her as Sirius' thumb suddenly rubbed hard at her clit, two fingers sliding rapidly in and out of her, hitting her g-spot. She broke, biting her bottom lip hard and shuddering, leaning on him. He wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her hair while she tried to recover.

However—the best thing in the world about being a woman was the capacity for multiple orgasms. She put her hands on his hips, pulled him close enough so that the hot length of his cock lay across her stomach. "Lift me," she whispered.

He did so, and they both groaned loudly as he dropped her slowly onto his cock. She slid down until her buttocks rested on his thighs, the balls of her feel still on the mattress behind him. She slid one of his hands up to her shoulder, pushed the other down to grip her ankle. Then she leaned backward to rest her head on the bed. Then she rocked her hips. Sirius wasn't slow to catch on, and matched her. They started slow, easing into the rhythm and harmonising their movements. Each thrust of his hips caused a slow shock of pleasure to ripple through her. Despite her orgasm of a few minutes earlier, it did not take long for the crest to build once more in her as they went faster and faster, bodies perfectly matched. Their speed increased until both of them were breathing hard, the bedroom filling with the noises of their pleasure. With fingers clenching hard on her skin, her name left his mouth in a cry of pleasure, and Sirius climaxed. As she felt white heat erupted inside her, Helena followed in a shock of delicious pleasure. Her legs slowly relaxed down, and Sirius moved to lie beside her, his breath coming in pants.

"Wow."

She grinned, and was glad when he made no move to embrace or kiss her. One of the reasons she'd chosen that position was that it limited physical contact, physical intimacy. It wasn't the physical closeness itself that scared her, if scared was the right word, just its connotations. And even then, with anyone else she could have handled sex becoming more—with Sirius there was an air of fragility that she couldn't dispel. She wasn't stupid, and she was well aware that they had potential for…well, greatness. Or utter and complete disaster. So far, she'd convinced herself that her logic would bear up under scrutiny because she knew she wasn't the only one holding back. He was hiding something from her too, after all.

Of course, she reminded herself the day after, now she was hiding two things from him. She was at Florean Fortescue's in Diagon Alley, awaiting the arrival of her mother. Somewhere not alcohol-centric had seemed like a good idea, and amazingly it had been accepted. They were due to meet at one, and Helena couldn't stop checking her watch. It was two minutes past the hour now—and she wanted to leave. Why had she even bothered? She didn't want to hear anything Veronique had to say; she hadn't when she'd left, after all. So why was she here? Why hadn't she listened to her friends?

"Ah, Helena, darling!"

Too late now.

Swallowing back her hesitation, she stood in time to receive two kisses on each cheek. She was stunned, and even more so when her mother took her face between her hands and looked at her with a concerned expression. "You're looking rather too pale, my dear."

Helena stared. "Too pale?" When was the last time any Malfoy had looked too pale?

"Have you been eating properly? I don't need to have Dobby send you a care package?"

"Um, no. I've been eating fine…"

"Glad to hear it. Oh, darling, I've missed you." Her mother's expression moved into a kind of embarrassed concern. "I should not have let you go at New Year."

"Doubt you'd have been able to stop me, Mother," Helena said coolly, disengaging her hands from Veronique's.

"No, I meant I should not have let you go in such bad blood. The manor's been quite empty without you. How have you been getting on? I persuaded your father to give you the annuity but he refused to give you a decent allowance. Surviving on a pittance must be so difficult-"

"It's not a pittance," Helena shook her head, "I've been able to buy a house with it, but- Mother, are you saying that you persuaded Father to give me the money? Why?"

"Helena," Veronique said, her voice regaining some of its old sharpness, "do not believe that I would allow my only…"

Here her voice stuck, as though a lump had developed in her throat and couldn't be passed. "Daughter?" Helena prompted.

Veronique's voice picked up like a record player whose needled had slipped. She seemed not to notice that Helena had spoken. "…daughter to survive the world alone! I realise we have not always been the easiest of friends, but I am still your…"

Helena raised an eyebrow. "Mother?"

"…mother, please do not think I have forgotten that."

"I don't think you've forgotten it. I just didn't think you ever liked that fact."

"It is not a question of liking," her mother said firmly. "It simply is."

Not quite sure that was comforting, Helena nodded and gestured at the table behind her. "Would you like to sit down, Mother, have some tea?"

"Not yet. Shall we walk for a while, darling? And then you can show me this house of yours."

"Um, I can?"

That was a little more than she'd bargained for. It was one thing to be seeing her mother again, another thing entirely to be showing her around her house. She really didn't want her in her house. …at least not until she was sure everything was tidy and that she'd picked up the trail of she and Sirius' clothing between the front door and her bedroom. And her mother wasn't in the mood to listen, which she shouldn't have been surprised at. Nor should she have been surprised at the amount of utter irritation that inspired in her. She could just imagine the smug expression on Sirius' face when she told him he'd been right, and that she shouldn't have agreed to this.

Veronique hooked her arm through Helena's and began meandering down the street. "Have you started at your healing post, dear?"

Helena looked at her mother as though she'd grown two heads. Never, not once in her entire memory—which admittedly was six months shorter than it should be—had her mother ever called her by any kind of endearment. And now her she was dishing out the 'darlings' and the 'dears' like they were going out of fashion. What in Merlin's name was going on?

"Helena?"

"Um, yeah. Yeah, I started a few weeks ago. We're on the animal bites ward at the moment."

"Good, good—and impressing your superiors, I trust?"

"I hope so. The head healer is Octa-"

"Oh, isn't that a marvellous set of robes!" her mother suddenly said, pulling her to a halt outside Madame Malkin's. The robes in question were a deep, royal purple, the sleeves and collar dusted with tiny golden stars. She moved Helena in front of the window next to the robes, apparently comparing her colouring with the robes.

"Do you like them?"

Helena nodded. They were beautiful, but they were absolutely different than anything her mother had ever looked at. "I'm surprised you do."

"Well, I'm only thinking for you, darling, only for you."

Again, her arm was ceased and she was dragged into the shop before she could protest. She managed to literally dig her heels in a few feet in and pull her mother to a standstill. "Mother, I don't want you to buy them for me. Otherwise there was no point in giving me an annuity."

"Please. To let me make amends."

"Mother, I don't need you to buy me things to make amends," she explained. "You can't buy me back."

"What do you mean?"

Helena sighed. Of course she wouldn't understand. No one in this family understood the concept that there was more to life than collecting gold, so why would her mother get that all she actually needed from her was to be her mother? "I mean I just…I don't want you to buy me things. It's not going to be like waving a wand—there is no magic solution to this mess."

Veronique nodded. "I see. Yes, that makes sense. Well, let me buy you them anyway."

"Mother-"

"Please. As a graduation present. I haven't told you how pr- prou-"

"Proud?" Helena supplied doubtfully.

"Proud I am of you."

Helena looked again at the robes. They really were very nice. And she did like purple. "Alright. Thank you, Mother."

It backfired spectacularly: although Veronique showered her with compliments once she tried the set on, and then bought her matching shoes, she then decided that she could not do without some matching jewellery. Happily, she knew a 'divine' little shop just down the street which would furnish her neck and wrists perfectly.

Helena was not pleased. "Mother, enough. If all you need is someone to buy things for, I suggest you go and seek out Narcissa."

"Come, Helena, I'm only doing this so that the outfit will be complete. Surely you understand that."

"No, I don't! I have other jewellery at home that will work just fine. Stop trying to buy me, for the last time!"

Veronique gave a short, sharp, familiar sigh. "Helena, I have explained how plainly that is not the case. Cease being tiresome and come."

"I'm not coming, Mother."

"Suit yourself."

As was her mother going to suit herself, apparently; turning her back on Helena, she moved a little way down Diagon Alley and then moved down Knockturn Alley. Still in the sunlight of the good street, Helena shook her head. She certainly wasn't going after her, not down there. If Veronique wanted to go into areas where questionable wizards lurked, then she could. If she wanted to run the risk of bumping into Death Eaters down there, so what? It wasn't her responsibility to go after her. If she wanted to get hurt or killed then-

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Helena muttered, going after her mother.

Within five minutes, she was seriously regretting it. And then seriously in trouble, very rapidly.

A/N: Review please!