Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Unstoppable	By : Thunderbird Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14474 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any affiliated characters. I make no profit from this story.

Chapter List
- 15
- 16
- 17
A/N: I really enjoyed your reviews this time around. Y'all are pretty annoyed at Hermione right now (not that I blame you). I guess we'll just have to see what happens...
And now we're back to Harry and Teddy for a bit. This one's a little intense but is building to some actually pretty nice stuff, I think, so bear with me. There's some humor sprinkled in there as well. And, as always, let me know what you think!
Chapter 16: Taken for Granted
(Harry)

Harry didn’t think he’d ever been more exhausted in his life. Perhaps during the war he had, but that was a different kind of exhausted. Weary. Numb. This was different.
He cancelled the alarm that was blaring on his wand, the one he had forgotten was set, and rolled over. Teddy was there next to him, no longer asleep, but looking at him with dark eyes that seemed remarkably like Andromeda’s, though they were half-closed in languor.
“How are you feeling, Ted?” Harry asked softly, placing the back of his head against the boy’s forehead. Teddy had been getting sick all night and had kept Harry up as well. They’d finally managed to drift off only a couple of hours ago.
“Better,” Teddy replied, his voice equally soft.
“I think it would be best if you stayed home from school today and got some rest.” It wasn’t an ideal situation. Harry really needed to be at work, particularly for an important meeting that morning with the PR team, to deal with the Rowle case. But Teddy was more important and, if Harry was honest with himself, he knew he needed the rest too.
But to his surprise, Teddy shook his head vehemently. “I want to go to school,” he said.
Harry furrowed his brow. “Aren’t you tired, Teddy? Don’t you want to sleep some more?”
But Teddy shook his head again. “No. I see bad things when I sleep.”
Harry sighed. He likely knew what “bad things” Teddy was referring to. It hadn’t been illness that kept him awake all night, but rather emotional upheaval. They’d gone to see Andromeda the afternoon before, and it hadn’t gone well.
Stupid, Harry said to himself. Stupid, stupid. Draco had warned him, had told him it was too soon. But Harry had decided to risk it. Teddy had been begging for days, finally at the end of his patience and anxious – more than anxious, really – to see his grandmother. And Andromeda thought it would be all right, that the effects of the charms had died down enough, that she was managing the side effects of the potions well enough, to handle a visit.
“It’s just an hour or two,” she had said when he floo called her about the prospect of bringing Teddy by. “I don’t see why we it would be a problem. I’m not a complete invalid.”
Harry had chuckled at that and readily accepted her word for it.
It had started out all right. Teddy was incredibly happy to see her, and seemed able to look past her notably sickly appearance, though Harry was sure he had picked up on it, being as sensitive as he was. Andromeda’s voice was weaker than usual too, and Harry noticed that she took longer to say things, as though she had to reach deeply into her brain to dredge up the words. But she had embraced Teddy enthusiastically and kissed him all over his face, and as Harry watched the sweet reunion he told himself that he had made the right choice.
But something had happened towards the end of the visit. While playing with Teddy Andromeda had gotten a bout of nausea that she couldn’t fight and had barely made it to a nearby bin before she became violently sick. Teddy had watched in horror and Harry in helplessness as she bent over and retched and retched. Harry knew it was no use pulling Teddy away now; he’d already seen it. So instead Harry had gotten a damp cloth and helped Andromeda to the sofa when she was finished, tending to her as best he could.
He perched next to her on the sofa as she lay across it, dabbing at her forehead and cheeks with the cloth.
“My wrists too,” she said hoarsely to him. “That always helps.”
Harry had obliged, fully aware that Teddy was standing there, watching them. Andromeda met his eyes after a few minutes.
“You should take him home,” she said softly.
“I don’t want to leave you like this,” Harry argued.
“This is how it is, Harry. I’m used to it. It’s all right. It’s passing now.”
“I could make you something before I go. Some soup, maybe?”
She had shaken her head and then closed her eyes, reeling, as if the action made her dizzy. “I’ve no appetite at all. And if I do get hungry, there is plenty of food here for me to warm.”
Still Harry hesitated, until Andromeda gripped his wrist tightly. “Please,” she said. “Please don’t make him watch this.”
And so they had left, returning home by floo, Teddy quiet and visibly shaken. Harry had taken him in his arms and told him it would be all right, that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, that it was normal, that Andromeda would feel better in a few weeks. He told Teddy anything he could think of that might help. He had expected Teddy to ask questions; Teddy always asked questions when he didn’t understand something. But he’d said nothing, only nuzzled into Harry’s chest and stayed there until Harry insisted they try to eat something.
They both only managed to pick at their dinner, though, and afterward Teddy didn’t even want to play Exploding Snap or do a puzzle or any of the other activities he did before his bath.
Harry felt worried, frightened even, but he didn’t know what else to do, so he’d continued with their routine, putting Teddy to bed promptly at eight. And then he’d gone right to bed himself.
He’d woken with a jolt when he heard Teddy crying his name, and made his way down the hall to Teddy’s room. When he turned on the light he found Teddy sitting up in his little bed, having thrown up all over his bedspread. He was sobbing. Harry got him to the bathroom before he got sick again, and tended to Teddy much like he had done with Andromeda. When Teddy had settled a bit Harry tried to scourgify the bedspread, though it still smelled horrible and would need to be properly laundered. He’d then let Teddy get in bed with him, and Teddy had tossed and turned all night, gotten sick twice more, though he hardly had anything left in his stomach, and finally cried himself to sleep.
It had been hell, and Harry was feeling the full effects of it now as he lay there, looking at his godson.
“I know it’s hard, Teddy,” he said. “But you don’t even have to sleep, you know, just rest. I just think school will be hard for you when you haven’t slept.”
“No,” said Teddy, his tone stubborn and his mouth set in a flat line. “I want to go.”
Harry sighed and looked at him some more. He didn’t know what to make of it. The only thing he could think was that Teddy wanted the distractions that school could bring. He wanted his friends.
“All right,” Harry said. “Then we need to get up, and we need to get cleaned up. How about a shower?” They both still smelled a bit like sick, Harry was sure.
Teddy agreed, and Harry brought him into the shower with him, washing his hair and showing him how to stand and tilt his head back so the water and soap didn’t get into his eyes.
When they were all clean Harry made them breakfast, which he was surprised to see Teddy scarf down quickly. At least he had his appetite back.
After he dropped Teddy off at school Harry contemplated returning home and climbing back in bed. But he really couldn’t justify it now, not without Teddy to take care of at home. And his meeting that morning was an important one. So he went to work, telling himself it wouldn’t be so bad.
He was relatively useless for the PR team meeting, but luckily he’d had the forethought to surround himself with the most competent members of the department, and they were able to work out the details of their action plan with minimal input from him. They had decided, however, that the best thing to do was to have Harry give an interview with someone from the Prophet to address Edmund Rowle’s accusations head on and to remind the public of all the good the after school programs were doing for wizarding youth.
Harry had sighed internally at that. He knew, of course, that he was the most logical choice. He was deputy head of the department, he had created the youth programs himself and was in charge of their daily operations, and, well… he was Harry fucking Potter. There was just no way around it. Still, the thought made him, if it was possible, even more exhausted than before.
He welcomed his lunch break and was considering what he wanted when there was a gentle knock on his door.
“Come in,” he called, silently cursing whoever it was. Couldn’t he just get a damned break once in a while?
But when the door opened, Harry saw Hermione standing there, holding a bag of takeaway food and looking uncertain.
“Hi, Harry,” she said softly.
“Hey, ‘Mione,” he replied. They hadn’t spoken since the week before, when Harry had told her off for standing him up for lunch. He felt a bit guilty about that; he knew he’d overreacted. But he also knew that for whatever reason, Hermione bailing on him had felt wretched, like one of the few bright spots of his week was suddenly taken away. But he hadn’t done a very good job of explaining that to her.
Seeing her now as she watched him with large, pleading brown eyes, he knew he couldn’t stay mad at her. She was Hermione, after all. All he had to do was think about everything she’d done for him over the years, and any residual anger faded.
“I brought you lunch,” she said. “It’s a curry. Your favorite. Plus rice and chapatis, of course.”
Harry found himself smiling. “Have a seat.”
Looking visibly relieved, Hermione sat and presented Harry’s food to him. Harry summoned a couple of butterbeers from a cabinet near his desk for them, and they ate together in silence for a minute or two.
Then Hermione put her fork down. “I feel just awful, Harry,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it all week.”
Harry relinquished his fork as well and looked at her. “Don’t, please, really. I was…” He considered what he was going to say. “I was just having a bad week, I suppose. Or I was… I don’t know. Lunch with you is always something I look forward to and I… was disappointed, I guess.”
Harry was surprised to see Hermione’s eyes already glistening with emotion. “They mean a lot to me too, Harry,” she said. “I never meant for it to seem like they don’t. I was just lost in my own head. There’s been-“ She stopped herself there. “We all have things in our lives that are stressful, don’t we? And I was just stuck in mine. But I wouldn’t give up our lunches together for anything, and I won’t make that mistake again, cancelling without even telling you. I promise.”
Harry nodded. “All right,” he said. “Thank you.”
He knew she was staring at him, but he was looking down at his curry, and he picked up his fork to take another bite.
“You look really tired, Harry,” Hermione said, and Harry looked up again to see that her eyes were tight with concern. “Is everything all right?”
Harry blinked at her. He was halfway to nodding and saying he was fine when he realized how stupid that was. Hermione would see through the pretense anyway.
“I made a mistake,” he said, and he was surprised to find a lump forming in his throat. “I took Teddy to see Andromeda too soon and now…” He swallowed. “I’ve fucked it all up, is what I’ve done.”
“What happened?”
Harry told her the events as they unfolded. “He was so quiet after that, ‘Mione. All day. He barely said anything, and that’s not like him at all. And then he got sick in the middle of the night…” He told her the rest, including how Teddy had still insisted he wanted to go to school.
“He made himself sick, just from seeing Andromeda get sick herself?” Hermione asked.
“I know it seems a bit extreme,” said Harry. “But you weren’t there. You didn’t see…” Harry shook his head. “She doesn’t look good, ‘Mione. Not at all. She’s lost so much weight, and she’s pale and slow-moving and… she doesn’t really seem like herself. And then, when she became sick… it was just really hard to watch. It upset me too. I understand why Teddy reacted that way. He’s sensitive, you know. He doesn’t like anyone else being upset or hurt or anything. It makes him upset too.”
“He has deep empathy,” Hermione offered. “Almost like he’s mirroring Andromeda’s illness, somehow.”
Harry nodded. “Yeah, it really was like that.”
“I’m so sorry, Harry.”
“I don’t think it would have been so bad except…” He ran a hand through his hair. “He knows what it means. He knows enough about what’s going on to know that she wasn’t ill because she ate some spoiled food or came down with a stomach bug. He knows it’s deeper than that, more serious. But he didn’t know… we had managed to protect him from the worst of it, from the details. And now I’ve gone and given him a glimpse without meaning to and I’m… I’m terrified I’ve ruined everything.” To his horror actual tears were welling up in his eyes, so thick they were already threatening to spill over.
“Harry,” Hermione said softly.
“And I’m just so damn tired,” he said. “I feel completely… empty.”
Hermione stood, making her way over to him. To his surprise, she sat down right in his lap and put her arms around his neck. He went along with it, resting his head against her chest. He could hear her heartbeat in his right ear as she cradled his head.
“You’re a good father, Harry,” she said, and Harry closed his eyes. “And Teddy is strong. He’ll come out of this all right.”
Harry let himself relax. Perhaps coming from someone else those words wouldn’t mean much. But Hermione was never one for platitudes. She was never one to say “it will all be ok” unless she really believed it.
“He has you, and he has Draco,” she went on. “And that makes all the difference.”
Harry found himself snorting. “He has me, at least,” he said.
Hermione pulled back so she could look him in the eye. “What do you mean? Has Draco not been… helping out?”
Harry shook his head, feeling guilty for implying that. “When he’s home, of course he does. But he’s never home.” He sighed. “Not never, of course, not really. But it feels like that. It feels like I’m doing so much of this on my own. All the hard stuff especially. Draco just gets to swoop in every now and then and play with him and read to him and all that, but he isn’t around enough to help me make the hard decisions.”
“So taking Teddy to see Andromeda was your decision alone?” she asked gently.
“I floated the idea by him last week, since I felt like Teddy was starting to get really anxious. He thought it was too soon. And he turned out to be right. Which only makes me…” He sighed again. “I don’t want to resent him, but I catch myself doing it anyway.”
“You’ve got to tell him how you feel, Harry,” Hermione said in an emphatic tone Harry recognized. “If you don’t like the way Teddy’s care is set up right now, you have to tell him. It will only get harder as time goes on.”
“But what can I do?” Harry argued. “Ask him to spend less time at the hospital? This is his job. It’s so important to him, and people depend on him.”
Hermione put a hand on his jaw and tilted his head upwards so he would look at her. “You’re important too, Harry. You and Teddy are more important than anything else. If Draco can’t see that, then…” She bit her lip. “He will see that. He loves you.”
“I don’t want to ask too much of him. Then he’ll just resent me too.”
“So you’ll just go along feeling like he asks too much of you but never say anything? Harry, I thought you wanted a happy relationship.”
Harry chuckled, and Hermione smiled down at him. “You’re right,” he said. “As usual. This is why I keep you around, you know.”
“Well, you know I like to make myself useful.” She patted his cheek. “I’m always here, you know, and so is Ron, if you… if there’s anything we can do.”
“Thanks, ‘Mione.”
She stood, returning to her seat and her lunch, and their conversation turned to happier things.
***
By the time Harry left work to pick up Teddy from school, he was feeling like a zombie. And he knew his day wasn’t over yet. The prospect of cooking and cleaning and everything else his evening would entail made him want to weep from sheer exhaustion.
Pull it together, Harry, he scolded himself. You will get through this. You have to.
Thankfully, Teddy appeared to be in much better spirits, much more like his usual self, when Harry spotted him on the playground in front of the school. He was running around with a dark-haired boy Harry didn’t recognize, and they appeared to be having quite a good time. Teddy had made his hair dark like the other boy, a good sign that they were getting along.
“Teddy!” Harry called to him to get his attention.
“Harry!” Teddy cried, once he had his godfather in his sights. He bounded up to Harry with a grin. “Can Liam come over today? Please?”
Harry turned his head to see that the other boy – Liam, he assumed – had approached and was mirroring Teddy’s pleading expression.
“I don’t know, Teddy,” he said. “It’s been a long week. I think we need to rest.” At least I do, he added silently.
“I’ll rest after, I promise,” said Teddy. “And I took a good nap today and everything, just like I said I would. You can ask Miss Adelaide. I did.”
“I believe you, Teddy,” Harry said. “I just don’t…” It felt rotten to turn down Teddy’s request, especially since he didn’t ask to have friends over all that often. Toby Goldstein had stayed overnight once, but that was about it. Any other day he would have readily agreed, but after the previous night…
Teddy took Harry’s hand. “Can we talk alone for a minute, please?”
Harry had to fight a smile at that. It was phrasing much like Draco used when he had something to say to Harry that he didn’t want Teddy to hear. Obviously Teddy had picked it up from him.
Harry let himself be led by the hand over to an empty bench while Liam waited by the gate, watching them but out of earshot.
“What is it, Teddy?” Harry asked, wondering what tactic Teddy was obviously trying to employ to convince Harry to say yes.
“Liam needs to come over today. He needs it.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he had a bad day.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. Was Teddy talking about Liam, or about himself?
“What happened?”
“Some of the other kids are mean to him. He’s new and he talks funny and he doesn’t have a dad. They tell him he’s weird. He needs me.”
“What about Miss Shreever or Miss Adelaide? Do they know what’s going on? Maybe they can help.”
“The kids say it when the teachers aren’t looking,” he said.
“Have you or Liam told them about what the other kids are saying?”
“They can’t do anything.”
“How do you know?”
Teddy sighed, clearly frustrated. “I want to help him myself.”
Harry nearly opened his mouth to ask why, but immediately realized that was a stupid question. He knew why. Teddy was a good, caring person. He may have only been five years old, but if there was anything Harry knew about Teddy, it was that he was good. And he had been encouraged to be that way. Andromeda, Harry, and the other adults in his life had always reinforced the idea that he should be kind and respectful to everyone, and that he should go out of his way to help people in need. So, wasn’t Teddy trying to do just that, right now?
And there might also be a part of Teddy that needed this himself, Harry realized. Perhaps this was how he coped with feeling helpless to help his grandmother. He helped someone else instead.
“If his mother agrees,” Harry said, giving in, “then yes, he can come over for a few hours. But he’s not staying the night, all right? You need to be in bed by eight and you need to sleep, do you understand?”
Teddy nodded vigorously. “I will, I promise.”
“All right, then,” Harry said with a sigh. “Where is his mother?”
Liam’s mother turned out to be an overworked and underfed looking witch named Christiane.
“Oh, wonderful!’ she had said immediately in a breathless voice when Harry told her he’d be willing to let Liam come to Grimmauld for the afternoon. “That would be just wonderful, really. Otherwise he would need to come back to the office with me. I have so much to get done, you understand.” She waved her spindly arms around as she spoke. “I’m doing this all on my own you know and I just never have a spare minute, you really have no idea.”
Harry blinked at her a moment, thinking that the bags under his eyes likely looked as dark as hers. But she hadn’t seemed to notice that. “Good then,” he said finally. “I’ll give you my address. What time will you come to collect him?”
She released a sigh so heavy her bony shoulders dropped about a foot. “Well I’ll likely finish at the office around six, and then I need to run to Diagon for a few things, so it will likely be around seven.”
Seven? What was he getting himself into?
“So, Liam, will eat dinner with us, then,” Harry said flatly.
“Oh yes, would you mind?” she replied, her brown eyes as wide and pleading as Teddy’s had been. “That would be such a help. And he’s easy, really. He’ll eat just about anything.”
“No problem,” Harry found himself saying. At this point, what difference did it make? He was so bloody tired he didn’t feel anything anymore, not even despair at the prospect of taking care of a whole other human being he barely knew. “Seven o’clock, then.”
He wrote down his address for her, then steered both boys towards the school’s floo. He wasn’t going to risk Apparating with two boys riding side-along. The last thing he needed was to deal with a Splinching on top of everything else.
This won’t be so bad, he told himself. It won’t be any different than just having Teddy. When Toby Goldstein came over, he and Teddy kept themselves occupied in Teddy’s room for most of the day. It was likely that Teddy and Liam would do the same. They’d have a couple of hours of quiet time in Teddy’s room, then play together in the sitting room while Harry cooked dinner. Before he knew it it would be seven o’clock and his weekend could actually begin. And Draco would be getting home only an hour or so later, likely also worn out from his long shift at the hospital, so they could turn in early. Then they would have most of the weekend together, just the three of them. Life would be so much better, easier, then.
Harry’s delusions were quickly shattered only a few minutes after arriving home. For one thing, “quiet time” was clearly a concept that was completely lost on Liam. He immediately wanted to dig into all of Teddy’s toys and find the ones that lit up and made lots of noise. Then he wanted to play with these toys very actively and very loudly, all over the house.
Teddy, for his part, seemed to only encourage him, emulating his behavior instead of balancing it out. Within an hour of being home there were already toys, puzzles, and art supplies scattered all over the main floor. Harry had given up trying to clean up after that, as there didn’t seem much point. Instead he sat on the sofa in the lounge for a bit and listened to the boys run around the house.
How does Teddy have the energy for this? he thought to himself as he rubbed his temples. The boy had barely gotten a few hours sleep the night before. He’ll be dead on his feet come seven. That, really, was the only bright spot in all of this. At least Teddy would be worn out and maybe (with any luck) sleep through the night.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t relax on the sofa for long, as he had heard Liam mention something about drawing new faces on the Black family mural in crayon, and he had to get up to put a stop to that plan before it started.
After some yelling and a very pointed look at Teddy, Harry insisted they go up to Teddy’s room for the next hour before dinner. For my own sanity, he nearly added aloud, but decided that wouldn’t be helpful. Teddy seemed to finally understand, from Harry’s look alone, that he was at his wit’s end with the two of them and was very close to forbidding Teddy from ever inviting Liam over again.
With the boys in Teddy’s room, Harry decided to go ahead and start dinner. It was a good thing, too, because it took him much longer than usual. He would take ingredients out of the fridge and stare at them, forgetting what he needed them for. Then he would set to chopping the vegetables before remembering halfway through that they needed to be cubed, not julienned, and he’d had to wave his wand to put the vegetables back together and start all over. He wasn’t sure if he was so distracted because he was tired or if it was the fact that he kept pausing to listen for sounds coming from Teddy’s room upstairs. He kept expecting to hear screaming, or perhaps explosions of a violent, destructive nature.
Finally dinner was ready, and Harry called the boys, who clambered down the stairs, talking animatedly to each other, and found seats at the table.
Harry was unsurprised, by that point, to learn that Liam was not in fact “easy” and did not in fact eat “just about anything.” He turned his nose up at the vegetables completely, and insisted that he absolutely hated brown sauce on his chicken, and Harry had to take a few extra minutes to rustle up something else for Liam to put on it.
Once they were finally settled with their food, Liam talked almost non-stop, like he had bottled up everything he had ever wanted to say for years and the cork had finally popped. While Harry and Teddy usually talked at dinner, it was always much more relaxed, and they both enjoyed silence as much as they enjoyed talking. Liam seemed incapable of not filling silence with something, and Harry found himself no longer paying attention to the words as he ate, but rather simply staring at the boy in a kind of horrified awe.
He could tell that Teddy, too, was growing weary by the end, as he had stopped talking for the most part in place of trying to get a word in every now and then, and instead just ate slowly while Liam bellowed on and accidentally knocked over his pumpkin juice with his wild gesturing.
After dinner Harry supervised a few rounds of Exploding Snap while they waited for Liam’s mother (who was, also unsurprisingly, late) to arrive. She finally showed up at twenty past, looking even more harassed than he had seen her before and going on about what a hard day she’d had. Harry simply nodded and hummed. He neither had the energy to be annoyed with her nor to feel sorry for her, although he was sure once he’d gotten some rest himself, he would likely feel both. Single parenting was hard, and Liam was a handful, much more so than Teddy. But the woman also seemed to spend a lot of energy talking and thinking about how hard it was, rather than taking some time to figure out how to make it easier. And that Harry had no patience for.
When mother and son were finally gone Harry looked around at the mess the boys had made and felt a wave of despair. So he wouldn’t be calling it such an early night after all, since he had to clean all this up, plus clean up from dinner. Perhaps Draco would be willing to help him. Or perhaps he should just save it for the morning and make Teddy help him instead, as a sort of learning experience, character building thing.
When he turned to Teddy it seemed clear that Liam’s presence in the house had been a character building experience all on its own.
“Can we skip the bath tonight?” he asked his godfather sleepily. “I’m too tired.”
Harry agreed readily. Teddy did have a shower that morning, after all. It wasn’t the end of the world. And it was already nearly a quarter to eight.
So they began a shortened version of the nighttime routine, and once Teddy’s teeth were clean and his pajamas on, he clambered into bed, his eyelids already at half-mast.
“Do you have energy for a story, or is it straight to sleep?” Harry asked him, silently hoping for the latter.
“I want Draco to read to me.”
Harry glanced at the clock. It was only a few minutes past eight. It sometimes took longer than this for Draco to get home.
“I don’t know if he’ll get here in time,” he told Teddy.
“I’ll wait for him,” the boy said with a yawn.
Harry sighed. “Shall we begin a story, at least?” he suggested. With any luck, Teddy would fall asleep quickly, and the point would be moot.
Harry picked up Alice in Wonderland, which they had been working their way through, and found the place where they had left off. He was only a page in or so when a stag Patronus materialized in front of them. Harry blinked at it, feeling like this didn’t bode well.
“Harry,” the stag said in Draco’s voice. “I’m going to grab a quick drink with Hannah and Pansy. I’m sorry it’s so last minute, but I’ll be home by ten, I promise. I love you. Say goodnight to Teddy for me.” And then it vanished.
Harry stared at the spot where the stag had been and blinked some more. He thought for a moment he could muster the energy to be angry, but instead he only felt more despair.
“I guess it’s just you and me, then, Teddy,” he said. He turned to the boy to see that Teddy was already asleep.
Smiling, Harry kissed him on the head, then put the book back on the bedside table. He knew he should get up now and clean up from dinner, at least. But he didn’t move, convincing himself that Teddy might wake up again and wonder where he’d gone. So he settled in, sliding down so his head rested on one of Teddy’s pillows, and closed his eyes. Just a few minutes, he told himself. Just a few minutes to make sure he stays asleep.
He rested his hands on his stomach, feeling his own breath evening out as the world around him slowly faded.
Up Next: Draco unwittingly walks into a quagmire.
LadyShire: You have a right to be concerned at this point. Hermione is not exactly thinking clearly. She’s too focused on what she “has” to do for her parents so she’s got a bit of tunnel vision.
We will get to see Narcissa again, multiple times. She hasn’t had much to do in the story at this point, I know, but she will, I promise.
SickPuppy: Yeah, Hermione’s being quite devious at this point, but right now she feels her dishonesty is justified (even though deep down she knows better). There will be consequences down the road, although they may not be exactly what you expect.
Thank you for all the great suggestions! “Bugger tits nothing” is fucking hilarious. I’m going to have to start using that one myself. Anyway, I’ve made the change, and if you ever notice something like that again please let me know so I can fix it!
Book_Addict_89: It’s true that Hermione isn’t acting very smart right now, in the sense that she’s not doing a great job thinking about the long-term consequences of her actions. At this point her justification is that she needs to help her parents, and better to do it behind Ron’s back so he doesn’t get in trouble for showing her something he isn’t supposed to. A flimsy excuse, yes, but that’s where her head is right now. At least she made things right with Harry.
Thanks for your comment about Draco! I always find him wonderful. Teddy and Andromeda will have another chance to reconnect when she is better, too, so don’t worry about that.
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