Chapter 9: Code Silver

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Author's Note: The chapter contains some violence (nothing gory or gratuitous) and I'd still rate as "T." However, I'd like to be sensitive to anyone who may be triggered by attacks.

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Fascinating.

Scorpius let his eyes dart from table to table. Cyprian and Tristan exchanged faces of disgust while Caitriona fabricated gossip about werewolves having only half a brain and rabies. The Ravenclaws whispered nervously and cast suspicious looks towards the newcomer. The Hufflepuffs appeared ready to faint, some even held each other's hands. The Gryffindors looked ready to grab their pitchforks and storm a castle. He rolled his eyes. The professors talked quietly amongst themselves, some faces revealing snarls of spite while others eyes wore anxiety. Headmistress McGonigal, ever professional, kept her face carefully blank. Grayback herself glared across the room, daring anyone to cross her.

This makes things… interesting.

The sensation of crisp autumnal chill tickled Scorpius' cheeks as he recalled the early October morning years ago, playing in a pile of vibrant, dead leaves.

Instead of ridding the yard of the "filthy, unkempt spectacle," as his mother was keen to call it, his father had swished his wand about to build a soft mountain. He had felt a sense of satisfaction handpicking the prettiest red and orange leaves off the lawn and flower beds, placing them high atop the pile. As his father often does when no one else's eyes are upon him, he had let mischief take rein. His father had chased him all around the hedgerow gardens, roaring and hollering and laughing. Long arms had wrapped around him, catching him from behind. The next thing he knew, his father had swung him soaring into the air. Scorpius remembered feeling so flabbergasted he had forgotten to scream. The thud landing; however, had not been hard. The pile of leaves felt soft as a bed of pygmy puffs and sounded like snow crunching underfoot. He had run back to his father, delighted, squealing for him to do it again and again.

They would have gone on for hours had a man with a voice like crackling oil not growled his father's name, "Draco."

Scorpius had never seen his father work magic so quickly or ruthlessly.

Before he had a chance to blink, his father had thrown him back towards the manor and cast more than a dozen protective charms around him. A large man with leathery skin and claw-like nails had emerged from the shadows, almost rivaling his father in height, certainly surpassing him in dimension. The man had demanded his father's allegiance with a chance to bring glory back to pureblooded wizarding families along with werewolves and other magical beings repressed by the Ministry of Magic. His father had worn a mask of cool indifference and told the man he had a minute before the Ministry would arrive. Grayback, as he learned the werewolf's name to be, proceeded to threaten his father with kidnapping "his only Malfoy heir" out from under his nose, either now or in the years to come, if he didn't comply. Scorpius had watched as his father had barked a hollow laugh followed by a maelstrom of flashing curses, ending with "threaten my son again and you'll wish the Ministry had gotten to you first." The werewolf had disapparated, howling with laughter and accepting the challenge.

The Ministry had arrived, naturally, two minutes too late with wands ablaze.

The flock of Aurors and his father's parole officer dispensed liberal accusations and threats citing his father's restricted use of combative and dark magic. Few appeared to buy the truth of the situation. Fenrir Grayback attempting to bring together Death Eaters and Dark Lord sympathizers? "Utter hogwash" the Ministry workers had declared, "Grayback is dead."

That was also the day Scorpius had met the renowned Harry Potter, the man who'd saved his father's life after years of school rivalry. Throughout the chaos, Mr. Potter had been the Auror who'd looked after him and ensured he was safe. He'd also been the one to untangle the myriad of protective spells his father had cast upon him while his father was bombarded with the entire holy inquisition from the Ministry. Mr. Potter had been kind, giving him chocolate and telling him tales of the quidditch matches he'd had with his father at school. After talking to Mr. Potter about the werewolf he'd seen and his father's actions, the Ministry let his father off with a warning and more restrictions. Before the gaggle of Aurors and Ministry workers had left, Scorpius had even thanked Mr. Potter for the chocolate and invited him to tea at Malfoy Manner. Naturally, he knew all the quidditch stories from his father already, but the way Mr. Potter had told them was hilarious and full of delightful details. The famous Auror had never taken him up on his offer to tea.

Still a shame.

Scorpius sought out the Potter brothers at the Gryffindor table. How grand it must be to be them. The elder Potter whispered with a blue-haired boy who was driving a fork into the hardwood of the table. The younger Potter patted the back of a boy as he vomited into a cup.

He watched as the sorting hat was brought out and Headmistress McGonigal gave a speech about solidarity and inclusivity. Stifling a yawn, Scorpius listened to his table debate what house Grayback, daughter of the notorious and wanted werewolf, would be placed into. Scorpius couldn't help but think that it didn't matter what house when you're the child of someone hated… that letter of acceptance, to any school of witchcraft and wizardry, let alone one's top choice… that would have been the moment to talk about, the moment that mattered. Everything after that's a footnote.

His father had taken great pains with his education, schooling him personally six days a week. Scorpius had learned all about the Goblin Wars with the ban against non-human magical beings from carrying a wand and the spiral of prejudice that ensued from that decision back in 1631. Wands became not just a physical force but also a symbolic image of power. Werewolves, being mostly wizards and witches since few muggles ever survived the bite, had suddenly become a matter of contention within the wizarding community. Questions had been thrown about whether werewolves could even still call themselves wizards. Many saw their blood as tainted, no more than monsters, and not deserving of wands either.

And here they are in the twenty-first century with the wizarding community still asking the same questions. He felt disgusted.

Why does the wizarding world have such an obsession with blood?

His parents had grown up with those disconcerting beliefs instilled in them, and it had led his dad to a lifetime of regret as a former Dark Lord supporter and Death Eater. Much like werewolves in the community, former Death Eaters were social pariahs, with careers and basic opportunities barred from them. Only the Death Eaters who weren't still rotting in Azkaban had a parole officer on their back for life along with a slew of Ministry restrictions. Nevertheless, with werewolves, it wasn't even that they'd done anything wrong, like begin to plan and carry out genocide against muggle-born witches and wizards. Exempting Fenrir Grayback, of course, and the legendary dark crimes of his pack. The wizarding world had just chosen to see werewolves as less.

Chosen to see their blood… their blood tainted with lycanthropy.

Scorpius couldn't help but feel sorry for the girl. She reminded him of her dad in a way. Who knows what folly Fenrir Grayback filled his child's head with, or how much she believed from her brainwashing. Obviously, the girl did something to get out. To distance herself from her family, possibly from their beliefs. He studied her closely. Her coilly hair lay plastered to her face, rivaling Filch's slimy locks. Her clothes were ripped and blemished with all matter of stains, revealing long pink scars marring her night-dark skin. Scorpius winced.

His father had told him all about working with Fenrir Grayback after that autumn day. Even back when following Voldemort, the werewolf had a mission to gain a pack of followers that fully embraced their feral side. He often went after wizarding children, kidnapping them while they were young and raising them with his pack. Part of embracing his wolf side, however, meant giving in to a wolf's instincts. His dad wouldn't elaborate on the details, but once mentioned he'd been subjected to witnessing Fenrir Grayback eat a young, kidnapped witch. Scorpius shivered and pushed the thought aside. Did he have to turn his own daughter into a werewolf or was she born one? According to his father, Fenrir loved to experiment.

"Hufflepuff!" the sorting hat cried.

A handful of yellow and black-clad students actually did faint in their seats. Sköll Grayback gave the same malicious grin her father had given to him and his dad that autumn day before disapparating.

A wolf allowed into a badger's den.

He watched as McGonigal blanched.

Grandma and Grandpa Granger had once taken Hugo and her to a carnival when she was very young. They had stayed late into the evening, thrilled to be up past their bedtime. The day had been filled with petting farm animals, playing games that moved from machine mechanisms, watching muggles in outlandish outfits balance on long sticks and juggle trinkets. They'd even tasted muggle specialties like cotton candy and fried Mars bars. The best thing, however, had been what the muggles called "rides."

The ingenuity of muggles enthralled her.

Without a drop of magic, muggles had managed to create machines that pulled carts around a track, spun around, flipped, and spiraled! Rose's favorite machine spun around in a circle lifting hand-painted statues up and down. The best part was that the statues were not only crafted to look like muggle creatures, but also magical beasts. Her grandma had told her it was called a carousel. She and Hugo had asked to ride it over and over, racing each other to win the prettiest creature to ride. Seated upon a blue dragon had felt like a magic all of its own, if not even more special than magic because of the intricate engineering and artistry the muggles had designed without the use of a single spell. Her imagination had run rampant and she had pretended she was riding a real dragon. In her imagination, therein thundered such magic.

Night having set, twinkling bulbs filled with electricity cast the carousel in changing hues of gold, blue, red, and green. Hollars of laughter, shouts of joy, whines, and chatter had cascaded all about her; all while she spun round and round on that blue dragon. Out of nowhere, explosions had reverberated in quick succession. Her vision had brought her round and round to bursts of fantastic colors lighting the sky. Everything had smelled slightly of smoke, grease, sweat, and atmosphere.

Rose's senses had never been so electrified.

She had loved the layers of sensation and had even let go of the pole on her carousel dragon to spread her arms wide and feel the wind rush through her fingertips. Still giddy from the ride, her grandparents had then ushered her and Hugo to a hill for viewing the end of the firework display. Colors had clashed and danced and glistened. The precise fireworks in the sky had thundered like a symphony of drums. That entire night had been simply magical, and all the more stunning since she knew not a single spell had been cast or a single potion had been brewed.

A sense of déjà vu washed over her as her hospital room exploded in shards of glass, shouts battered her ears, and exploding colors zapped above her head. If the colors, hollers, and explosions at the carnival had been the stuff of dreams, then the attack at the hospital was the stuff of nightmares.

Unlike the carnival, where all her senses had been soaking in as much as they could possibly experience, Rose now had the uncanny feeling of watching the events unfold as if she were outside of her body, just observing.

She sensed herself being thrown to the floor, her grandmother holding her close and acting as a barrier between her and the spells ricocheting across the room, like birds flying tree to tree. Her grandfather rolled the bed she had been occupying a second ago into a stocky figure attempting to enter. She observed as her grandfather threw objects at random – bottles, wrappings, food.

The stocky man still gained entry.

Rose watched as the man stalked toward her grandfather, wand raised, a malicious smile occupying his lips. Grandpa Granger's eyes were so wide. He slowly positioned himself in front of her grandmother and her, clutching his umbrella like a saber. The stocky man hesitated.

His mistake.

The room was flooded in a burst of green light and the man dropped to the floor before having a chance to wave his wand. A new intruder entered sanguinely, tall and lean. Voice cool, he clipped commands towards her grandparents. Rose strained her mind to catch words from the conversation.

Wand? Muggle. No.

Without hesitating, the man flung her grandfather back towards her and her grandmother with nonverbal magic. He cast a series of spells fast as lightning, then turned back into the fray.

Other men and women, snarling and wands flaring, entered her room. She observed, curious, as they cast spells at her and her grandparents, colors reverberating off an invisible barrier or sizzling out before reaching them. Their attackers threw objects and kicked at the invisible shield. The barrier held fast, the items about the room were in splinters.

Everything moved in slow motion.

The tall man never left her view for long. He danced back and forth, graceful as a crane, sending a series of spells to meet the onslaught of oncoming blares of red and green. The colors of whizzing lights peaked, then faded as a new group of wizards swept into the hospital wing, a sea of brown leather.

She felt her grandparents tapping her shoulder and bringing her face close to their eyes. Their mouths were moving.

"Rose!"

Like stepping into a bath one expected to be hot but finding it cold as ice, Rose felt a jolt of realization surge across her body. All her senses snapped back into play. The scent of smoke filled the air, her body ached from where her grandmother's hands had gripped her. She moaned in pain. Her body and mind felt assaulted. Overwhelmed. Electrified.

"Rose, Rose? Can you hear me?" Her grandmother tightened her grip.

Her ears were ringing. She nodded assent.

"It's Harry. Uncle Harry's here."

Rose peered past her grandpa's shoulder. Uncle Harry stood casting spells at the barrier that had protected them, his face screwed up in concentration, perplexed.

"Rose! Are you okay?" Uncle Harry shouted while waving his wand.

"I can't get through to you. Did one of the Medi-witches cast a protective spell over you? This magic is incredibly complex. It's going to take a while for me to break it. We've just apprehended most of the attackers who are still alive but I need to ensure the other children on this wing are safe too."

"It was him," her grandfather pointed a tremulous finger at the tall man as he entered her room.

The man's cloak was in tatters and his face sported a range of scratches welling with blood. He brushed snow-blond hair tipped in red out of his face.

"Malfoy!" Her uncle's mouth remained agape for a moment before he cast an easily deflected Expelliarmus at the man.

"Just my luck. I get the whole glorious Golden Trio today." The man barely flashed a smirk before altering his tone to reflect gravity. "I trust my protections held up?"

Uncle Harry stopped casting spells at the man, who blocked them like he was doing nothing more than dusting lint off his robes.

"Your protections?"

She'd never seen Uncle Harry so shocked. He looked back and forth between her and the man who'd saved her.

"Obviously. Catch up, Potter. Now don't tell me that while I was doing you Aurors' jobs, protecting and defend the children in this wing, you were standing in here trying to undo my protection spells while the attackers were still out there."

"I…" her uncle groped. "What are you doing here?"

"May I suggest you first check that harm did not befall the other children in this wing? The couple in here are muggles and couldn't defend this girl, though the man was certainly resourceful. There were a couple families in other wings who aided me, but a few children were alone. We need to prioritize the children who were hurt before you start trying to break through my spells or ask ridiculous questions."

Uncle Harry was frozen to his spot.

"But… but… but she's.. she's my…" Uncle Harry looked straight into her eyes.

She'd never seen her uncle cry before.

"Potter, room five. Now. I only caught a glimpse, but I'd say that boy had it worst."

Her uncle was breathing hard, his face turning pale. She watched as his legs wobbled.

The man by the name of Malfoy gripped her uncle's robes in both hands and stooped to face him.

"Merlin, Potter! They call you an Auror?" Malfoy snapped. "I said we need to go. Now!"

"But she's… she's my niece," Uncle Harry whispered, voice breaking.

Malfoy's storm-gray eyes rested on her for a moment only, eyes briefly widening.

"She's safe right now. The boy in five is not."

"Go!" her grandfather called, waving his hand in a shooing motion. "We'll be fine."

She observed the tall man fist his hand around Uncle Harry's robes and drag him reluctantly out of her room. Rose stared back at her uncle, blankly, as shock set in.

"No… Surely not. It can't be? That handsome man wasn't the boy Hermione always talked about? The one she'd competed with at Hogwarts for top marks? The one who always taunted her? The one she'd slapped?" Malfoy, was it?" Her grandmother whisper to her grandpa.

"Draco was his name. Draco Malfoy, no?" Her grandfather smiled and let loose a single laugh laced in hysteria.

She shivered and sweated, feeling her heart racing again. Her grandparents laid her down, wrapped her in a sweater, and elevated her legs. Her grandparents talked to her in gentle voices and she strained to listen, pushing images of curses and screams out of her mind. By the time she felt her breathing return to normal, the tall man and Uncle Harry were back. She watched, dazed, as Malfoy released his protective wards with a series of intricate spells mixed with his blood.

Uncle Harry had been furious, speaking the words dark magic over and over. Malfoy didn't try to defend himself or plead innocence. She didn't care what it had been, she knew whatever the wizard had done had been powerful enough to protect her grandparents and herself. The Ministry workers, however, led the man away from her room with hands restrained.

She felt helpless to do anything and simply observed as Healers and Medi-witches and wizards swiftly flooded back into the wing, assessing the damage, tending to the wounded, and ensuring she was unharmed, that the her brain hadn't hemorrhaged. Her dad arrived later, ablaze with panic and complaining that no one had been able to floo into the hospital when the Aurors arrived. Her mother joined her later that evening, dark circles ringing red-rimmed eyes. The had Ministry forbade her to leave when they discovered St. Mungos was under attacked. A colleague had cast petrificas totalus on her to stop her from exiting. Rose found herself amused as her mother told the family she had quit on the spot as soon as she had been released from the body-binding spell; her coworkers hadn't accepted her verbal threat of resignation.

Her mum was almost married to her job in the Department of Magical Creatures. One would have to pry her hands away from the department finger by finger to get her to leave.

Rose laughed, surprising herself and her family. Her mum blushed, but her dad joined in with a chuckle of his own, attempting to lighten the mood.

Living through a nightmare made real and now she was laughing at her mum's grief.

What was wrong with her?

She supposed slowly watching everything return to normal, masking the damage that anything had happened, was hilarious.

Flustered, her mother proceeded to tell her father and grandparents about the other coordinated attacks that had been carried about before the attack on St. Mungo's. How Fenrir Grayback himself had been supposedly spotted leading a pack into a muggle movie theater in Glasgow, and another werewolf pack attacked a transit station outside Birmingham. It had all been a distraction; occupy Aurors as a band of werewolves and Merlin-knows-what else attacked the main prize, the hospital. Specifically, the children's wings.

While the Healers and Medi-workers had done their best to throw protective enchantments on rooms in haste, it was part of their policy to either leave the building or hide in place. Only as a last resort were they to fight. Her grandparents told her mum and dad about the man who'd saved them all, killing seven of the attackers and injuring five of them singlehandedly. Her parents exchanged a look of disbelief.

"But he's a Death Eater," her dad gasped. "We'd just run into him here earlier. Hermione took Malfoy to the emergency room before going back to the Ministry. Used her name to get the Healers to take look at his Dark Mark again… it was corroding his skin."

"A Death Eater who probably followed the commotion while everyone else ran away from it," her mother said silently, staring down at her hands.

"What will happen to him?" her grandfather inquired.

Death Eaters. Werewolves. Dark Marks. Attacks.

For once today, she finally felt anger burning through her fear. She'd had enough of secrets and not understanding anything. Merlin! She still had a hard time simply comprehending their speech. Wanting to know what secrets had been kept hidden from her had now been replaced with a burning need to know.

"Tell me. Shecrits. Your secrets. Story." She hissed, livid, not even caring that her enunciation still came out odd.

Her parents stared at her as if they'd been caught red-handed.

"Uncle Harry, tocklet frog," she raised an eyebrow. "Tell. Now."

Her dad clung to her mother as she wept. Rose watched as her grandfather took her hand. Going slowly and pausing to repeat parts, her grandfather began the story of how he discovered his daughter was a witch, and all the adventures and horrors that befell her and turned his hair white.