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With a Little Help From My Friends
Chapter 8
By Kinsfire
With a Little Help From My Friends
Chapter 8
Draco and Harry decided to pull their little prank on Halloween during lunch. I had to admit that it was quite a brilliant manoeuvre, when truly thought about. Draco entered the Great Hall and walked over to Harry. "How can I help you?" Harry asked him.
"I have a question for you," Draco replied. I knew my son well enough to recognise the tone of amusement in his voice.
"I have an answer. Let's see if they match," Harry responded.
Draco paused for a moment before saying with a grin (I could hear the grin in his voice), "Well, since you're my stepfather now, I was wondering about a raise in my allowance."
Harry looked at him for a moment, and I could see his eyes sparkling with mirth. "Tell you what, Draco. I'll give you double what I'm paying you now."
"You're not paying me anything right now," Draco replied.
"Well, that's not my problem, is it?" Harry asked with a grin, and that was it for the both of them. Draco bagan to chuckle softly, while Harry began to laugh loudly. Hermione and Ginevra Weasley both began to giggle, but Ron and a few of the male Gryffindors were confused to say the least.
The room filled with talk a moment later as Harry made a space at the end of the table for Draco, who took the offered seat, much to the surprise of everyone at the Gryffindor table. I could feel Harry's pride a moment later when Ginevra looked at Draco and then held out her hand. "Hi. Ginny Weasley. Nice to meet you, Mr Malfoy."
My son lit up at the instant acceptance, but asked anyway. "Why?"
"Harry and Hermione trust you enough to let you sit here. You worked with Harry to play a prank on the rest of the school — one that harmed no one. That means you're worth talking to. We're not friends, given the history between the Malfoys and the Weasleys, but you've got a chance now."
"Not that it means anything, given that the Malfoys are now penniless, but I will do everything in my power to end the enmity between the Weasleys and the Malfoys."
"Why?" Ronald Weasley asked.
"Simple," Draco responded. "I've had it drilled into me that pretty much everything my father has taught me is wrong. Hermione is stronger magically than I can ever expect to be, but according to my father's beliefs, that shouldn't be. We're purebloods, so we have to be better. It's automatic. His great and powerful lord has been defeated by someone else that the blood purists say shouldn't have been able to do it. And all these purists are bowing and scraping to someone who is himself a half-blood, or at least was before he stopped being human at all. A Malfoy bows to no one. So why is Lucius bowing and kissing the hem of an inhuman monster's robes?" He met the male Weasley's eyes. "Let me put it to you in a manner that I'm sure you'll actually accept from me. I want to survive this war, and that won't happen if I support the madman that I used to. So I'm throwing my support behind my mother's new husband publicly."
Weasley looked at him for a long moment, and then did something that forced me to reassess the Weasleys. "You're on probation, Malfoy. Ginny's right. Hermione and Harry are giving the benefit of the doubt to you. They're not often wrong about this sort of thing."
"*coughcoughLockheartcough*," Harry 'said' in response.
"Lockheart and Harry not getting any tonight aside," Ron Weasley continued with a small laugh, "I trust their choices. If they're giving you a chance, then I will too. And maybe this damned feud can really end." He stood and walked over to my son, holding out his hand. "To a new beginning. Ron Weasley."
Draco lit up as if the morning sun were on his face. "Draco Malfoy. I've got a lot of history to live down, but I'm willing to try." The two shook hands, and the look on Harry's face was indescribable.
We continued to work on the spell and trying to improve our stamina — his stamina for that activity was just fine, thank you very much — while the school continued around us.
I awoke Halloween morning with a sense of disquiet. I couldn't put my finger on it. It didn't seem to be Harry, because he was currently snuggled up against my backside, and I was looking forward to helping him with his usual morning visitor, which was currently pressing gently against my bum. Hermione was on her back and smiling slightly, the sheet down to her waist, leaving her pretty breasts bare and somewhat hard-tipped in the slight cool of the morning.
I shrugged in my inability to pin down the problem, and rolled over to face my husband. I marvelled that I had somehow fallen in love with a man who was physically younger than the child of my own body. His soul was — pardon the trite saying please — an old soul, however. He had moments of extreme teenager, one might say — one of which I intended to take advantage of in just a few minutes — but most of the time he was remarkably adult. Even more so than my ex-husband Lucius.
Shaking my head, I leaned forward and kissed his lips softly, which pressed my breasts against his chest. This always seemed to wake him, and I had even used it one night to wake him when he had one of his 'Voldemort dreams' as he calls them. Apparently the three of us caused Riddle some pain that night, I add with some pride.
Without getting entirely to graphic about what happened next, let me just say that if I hadn't been pregnant already, I certainly would have had the ammunition to become so afterwards. He was inspired enough that Hermione thanked Merlin for contraceptive spells as well.
We headed down to breakfast after a quick shower (of course we conserved water!) and sat in our accustomed seats, slightly tenderly for Hermione and I — he was a tad inspired, as he said. Albus's eyes twinkled madly, as they so often do, and I found myself wondering if he somehow knew exactly what we'd been doing. Perhaps the castle or the house elves were spying on us? Well, if so, I hope that my Harry made the old goat jealous.
Breakfast was completed and we rose to our feet to leave, but I was suddenly wracked with pains in my abdomen. Harry was on his feet in a moment and beside me faster than I could have imagined. The pains were not subsiding — in fact, they seemed to be getting worse — so he simply lifted me and carried me to the hospital wing.
Poppy began to scan me when Harry yelled, "What the -!" I looked over to see my son, quite worried, carrying Hemione into the room. She looked a distinctly unnatural colour and was semi-conscious.
A moment later, Poppy was flipping her wand toward the potions cabinet, and several bottles came floating toward me. She poured a dose of a lurid pink one that I knew to be an all-purpose counter-poison, albeit an imperfect one. "I've been poisoned?" I asked as she handed the noxious glass to me.
"Yes, and it's going to take me a while to figure out which one it is," she replied. "That will at least slow it long enough to check out Miss ... my apologies ... the other Mrs Potter." She ran her wand across Hermione and frowned before pouring another dose of the pink concoction. Her colour improved almost immediately.
"Did anyone else get sick?" Harry asked suddenly.
"No," the Headmaster said as he entered the room, frowning. "The only victims were your wives."
He spun to Draco. "Who are the marked students in Slytherin?"
"I know Parkinson is. She's got it somewhere other than her arm, however." He blushed as he said it. "It's really the only nice looking part of her." When Harry continued to look puzzled, my son lightly smacked his own left buttock.
"Ah. Well, I want her in custody now. I want to find all the other Death Eaters in the school, and I'm going to need a Dark Mark for that — I'm pretty sure that we can find them if we use one of them as a guide for what they feel like."
"You are not feeling any other girl's bum, Harry," Hermione said with a weak laugh, coughing once to punctuate her statement.
"There is no other girl in the school who can compare to either you or Cissy," he said simply. I found tears in my eyes because it was said in such a manner that anyone listening knew that he felt that to be a fact, not a method of making us feel better. He truly felt that no other woman could be as attractive!
With what that man does to my hormones without even trying, I have little doubt that we will end up with a family to rival that of Arthur and Molly Weasley, much may they laugh.
With the counterpoison working well enough, I examined Poppy's results and smiled. The idiot (or plural, as the case might be) had chosen simple poisons, perhaps hoping that neither of us would figure out what had been done in time.
Once we had properly been dosed with the proper antidotes, we were told that we would be staying in the wing for the rest of the day. Lunch would be brought to us, and we likely would be released for dinner, but we were going to be where Poppy could keep an eye on us. My suspicion was that she was worried about the baby. I was as well, considering the pain had been in my abdomen.
Pansy Parkinson was brought into the hospital wing a short time later, nursing a broken arm and a broken leg. A moment later, Harry came in with Draco leaning heavily on him, my son bleeding from the head and leg. "You're all right, Draco," Harry said with a voice that showed that he was impressed with something.
"If I'd done it right, I wouldn't be bleeding," Draco groused. "She got a chance to shoot back at me."
"Yeah, and what she shot at you gave me the excuse to break her arm. Her leg was a bonus."
"Excuse me?" Poppy said with a slightly incredulous look. "You consider extra wounding ... please explain."
Draco spoke. "Strip her behind a curtain with someone like Mother or Gra ... Hermione holding a wand on her. Look at the left bum cheek."
"And how would you know what is there?" she asked with amusement.
"You're the school's Healer," Draco replied with a sparkle to his eyes. "Do I really need to give you The Talk?" Poppy laughed at his response.
She pulled a curtain around herself and Pansy and said, "Now, am I checking out these wounds and this thing they wish me to find with your help, or must I stun you?"
None of us could understand the mumbling that Pansy did, but a moment later Poppy said, "The Dark Mark. On your arse, no less."
"It was forced on me!" Pansy suddenly exclaimed. It might have worked had Draco not snorted.
"Then why were so proud of it that you couldn't wait to show it to me?" he asked. "Admittedly, that was when I was looking forward to taking my own. Luckily I learned better before it got that far."
"You may have them fooled, Draco, but I remember how hot you were when you saw it on my bum," the girl snarled. "I couldn't sit down the next day, you were so forceful! So don't give me this high-and-mighty attitude of yours. You're just as eager to take the Mark as I was!"
"I was eager," Draco replied. "Then I learned about a few things, like that thing you call your master. Did you know that he's not even really human anymore? He's no longer the Heir of Slytherin, because when Harry killed him, the body was destroyed. When he came back, he used his Muggle father's bone, and Harry's blood. Nothing connecting back to his mother's side, which would have to be the Slytherin side. So you're worshipping the ground that a half-blooded monster walks. What's he really done for you? Has he promised to bang that backside of yours like you want him to? I doubt he's got the equipment to!"
"Unless he's grown some later, he didn't when he reformed in the graveyard," Harry said simply.
"He's conquered death!" she said.
"He's scared of dying," Harry countered. "He doesn't like it when someone has the power to stand up to him. He ran like the coward he is when Dumbledore showed up at the Ministry. They traded shots for a while, but when the situation arose where he could leave, he did. Poof! He was gone faster than your knickers when someone asks if you want to have sex."
"Damn, that's fast!" Draco said, seemingly to himself, but it was calculated to be heard by everyone in the room.
"The question," I interjected into the room in a tone to break up any potential arguments, "is to decide what we're doing with the child."
"I was thinking that we give her to the Aurors to try for being a Death Eater," Harry said. "After we take scans of her Dark Mark, of course. We need to get some readings so that we can tell who's a Death Eater and who isn't." He paused. "Well, who's marked and who isn't. Parky probably isn't, but he's sure a sympathiser."
"You will not talk about my father that way!" Pansy shrieked.
"Or else what, little girl?" Harry asked, pulling the curtain away and exposing the girl's shame. "You'll threaten me? Lucius Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle's fathers, and Riddle himself couldn't break me this summer when they had me in their grasp. What do you think you could threaten me with?" He paused. "Madam Pomfrey, could you cover her? I'm getting nauseous." He turned to face Hermione and me, his face a mask of rage, but it flowed away as he saw us. "You or your ilk here in the school tried to poison my wives, Parkinson. What do you think I should do to those who poisoned my wives, since I have the right to challenge them to a duel?"
"You're too goody-two-shoes to do anything to me, Potter!" she exclaimed triumphantly. She screamed a moment later as he was suddenly next to her bed. He grabbed her arm and a moment later the scream turned to pain as he brought his elbow down on hers, causing her arm to bend the wrong way suddenly.
"Don't try me, Parkinson," he growled. "If I think it will keep you from doing irreparable damage to my wives and child, then I will kill you if I have to. I don't want to, but I will. Don't mistake a desire to stay out of prison for weakness, bitch."
(I think that his growl was supposed to be scary — it certainly terrified most people in the room — but both Hermione and I found it rather sexy. I chuckled to myself as I watched Hermione smoothing her robes over her breasts, trying to hide the reaction our husband had caused.)
What truly impressed me was Poppy's response to this. She winced at Harry's attack on Pansy, and started to move to stop him, but paused. She looked worried at Harry for a moment, but softened when she met his eyes. I saw why when I looked at him. He was giving her a look that said that he was sure that he'd lost her respect for him. She moved the curtain closed again and set about healing Pansy's injuries. I joined her behind the curtain and began to scan the misguided girl's arse. (I must admit that my son was right — it is attractive, especially compared to the rest of the girl. (I believe that I once referred to her as 'she who chases parked carriages'?) But I'm quite happy with the way that Hermione's skirts flow across her posterior, so I didn't give the Parkinson girl another thought.) I recorded certain energies radiating from the Mark on her arse, so I took the most complete scans that I could before leaving Poppy to finish her job.
I took my leave of the two and headed to the small gathering which now included the headmaster. "If I know Poppy, and I have worked with her for many a year now, she understands perfectly why you did what you did. She might be a Healer, but she understands that certain things are necessary in times of war. You made a point to Miss Parkinson in a place where she could get treatment immediately. I doubt that this was missed by Poppy."
"Indeed it was not, Headmaster. Don't worry yourself about my reaction to your ... instructing Miss Parkinson, shall we say? She was involved with poisoning your wives, since there is still some slight residue on her hands of the ingredients necessary for the potions in question." To make sure that Harry understood her, she quickly hugged him, and my darling husband relaxed finally. "We do things that we don't like to in war, Harry. I've had to let people die before."
"And I've got to kill in a few days." He shook his head. "Thank you, Madam Pomfrey. I needed that kick in the arse."
"Any time, Harry," she answered with a laugh. "And when we're not amongst the rest of the student population, I give you permission to call me Poppy."
He smiled broadly at that.
We spent the next day developing a detection spell to find the Dark Mark. (It's not like it was that difficult. Most of the detection spells are quite similar. You simply input the variables that you are searching for into the spell. If there is anyone suited for such a task, it was Hermione. Assisted by the headmaster, the work was done quite quickly.)
A general assembly of the school was called as soon as we were able to contact Amelia Bones, and the spell netted us another six marked students, who were quietly 'marked', but not arrested. We knew that there were likely more who had not yet taken the Mark, but such is life. We were fairly certain that we could get enough information to know who some of the unmarked students were.
We were now as prepared for the next Wizengamot meeting as we were ever going to be.
Author Notes:
One more chapter to go...