A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 30 – Exhale

Tonks couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t exhausted. It seemed that lately she was up and off to work before dawn and back home again long after sunset. It also seemed to her that her days were more frightening and terrible than they had been even a few months ago.

There was a pall of hopelessness that had fallen over the Aurors lately. They were investigating the rash of post-marital deaths resulting from the Marriage Law, but it was like trying to hold sand in your hands. There were grieving families demanding justice and then there were the dead bodies, that all seemed to have died of natural causes or suicide. It was too much of a coincidence that only the half bloods and Muggleborns were dying, but there was no proof of a crime. Even families that Tonks had thought were open-minded and tolerant were closing ranks with the other purebloods and every avenue of investigation became a dead end.

Tonks had seen four dead bodies in the last week alone, all of them young girls recently wed against their will. In all her years as an Auror (which as Moody pointed out endlessly were not all that many) she had never seen anything like this.

Then there was the Exodus. Every day young witches and wizards came into the Ministry to hand over their wands and have their names stricken from the Marriage lists. They were all scared to death that they could be the next black-banded photos in the obituary section, and Tonks couldn’t blame them. It was just that seeing their wide-eyed fear day after day was disheartening. Every single defection was a victory for Voldemort.

She had been lucky to get Percy; she knew that, even though she still wasn’t sure that she even liked him very much. Still, the alternative was to be found on the enchanted granite preservation slabs down at the morgue. Tonks saw herself in every one of those girls. She had come so very close to their fate.

“Dora?” Her husband’s voice from the kitchen greeted her as she stepped out of the fireplace and dusted floo powder off of her clothes.

“Oy Percy,” she called back wearily. He popped his head out and, catching sight of her, frowned.

“Are you just getting off?” he asked her with a touch of irritation. “Fudge needs to stop working you all so hard.” Tonks paused and eyed Percy in suspicion.

“What is your sister’s full name?” she asked him suddenly.

“Ginevra, why?” he asked, his expression perplexed.

“Just checking, I’ve never heard you call him anything but Minister Fudge before, that’s all.” His face cleared and he looked a little sheepish.

“I have recently undergone a change of heart,” he muttered. He opened his mouth as though to say something more, but paused and seemed to change his mind. “There is food in the kitchen,” he said instead and gestured her forward.

“Thank Merlin!” she exclaimed fervently. “I’m starved,” she added, which wasn’t far from the truth. She had been going all day with nothing more than a scone at lunch and the endless pots of coffee that the Ministry Elves produced for the Aurors. She had lost weight over the last weeks, and even Molly was having a hard time feeding her up.

The tiny kitchen was warm and smelled delightful. Toasted crusty bread and a hearty beef stew were being placed on the table as she came in and she breathed out her stress and tension, relaxing muscles that she hadn’t even realized were tense. Flopping into a chair and grabbing a hot mug of cider completed her entrance to heaven.

“Thank you so much, Percy. I really needed this.” Inhale the scent of fresh bread and exhale more grief and anxiety, she thought happily. “So how was your day?” she asked finally, after she had rampaged through a bowl of the delicious stew and two pieces of bread.

“I sent out yet more bids and sealed yet more young people’s fates, why do you ask?” There was bitterness in his voice, but also a sort of weary resignation. Tonks looked up at him and saw how thin he was and how the lines of tension were becoming etched around his eyes and mouth. It occurred to her that she had been so wrapped up in her own suffering that she had completely ignored his.

She was ashamed of herself.

“It’s not your fault, Percy,” she ventured, but he shook his head.

“It IS my fault, Dora, as well as every other witch and wizard who has simply gone along with this and not protested, not fought,” he answered with a sharp anger that surprised her.

“What do you think we ought to do? Start a revolution?” She had meant it as a joke, but Percy nodded back at her with dead seriousness.

“What we need is a new Minister of Magic,” Percy finally said what everyone had been thinking for a long time.

“Who would you put in his place?” Tonks enquired, placing her chin on her fist and really studying her husband for the first time.

“My father would try hard, but he doesn’t have the guts for politics or I would nominate him,” Percy began, his eyes unfocused as he thought about it.

“Kingsley runs the department these days and he has years of politics behind him,” Dora pointed out, getting into the spirit of it.

“Yes, but he is an Auror, not many Ministers have ever started out as Aurors, the odds are against him. We need someone that everyone can get behind and who will be a sure thing.” His face was almost attractive while he was thinking, she realized in surprise. Usually she could only see the bureaucrat, the prim fellow with the pursed lips, but this Percy was quite different. She rather liked this guy, where had he been hiding?

“True, but the only people who are popular enough to landslide in over Fudge are Dumbledore, who won’t take it, Amelia Bones, who is probably too old, Apollo McGonagall, who is too combative, Ludo Bagman, who is too stupid or Glorianna Goodspell, who is too eccentric,” Tonks pointed out.

“You are forgetting someone,” Percy flashed her a devious smile and she sat up straighter in interest.

“Who?”

“Amos Diggory.”

Tonks stared at her husband for a long time, rolling the thought around in her head. It was true that since his son’s death, Amos had been the center of a lot of hoopla. His son was seen as the first martyr in this new war against Voldemort and by extension Amos had become oddly famous. He was always being quoted in the papers, and his opposition to the Marriage Law was well known. He was famous and pitied, but would it translate?

“That just might work, Percy,” she finally responded. “We will have to talk to the Order about it as soon as possible.”

Percy smiled at her, and for the first time Tonks had the feeling that she was in an actual partnership. She didn’t love him, but she could stand him, and was even starting to really respect him.

It would do, for now. It would do.

Draco Malfoy was having a really bad day. He was sitting at the long wooden Slytherin House table alone, which was an unusual occurrence for him. Crabbe and Goyle had abandoned him to stuff their faces in the kitchen, it being between mealtimes just then. He had come down to read at this odd hour to avoid Pansy, who kept giving him significant looks during meals. Then there was the fact that the entire Hufflepuff House was glaring daggers at him, whenever he crossed their paths.

This didn’t even begin to encompass the horrible fact that Snape was short-tempered to the point of taking points away from Slytherin lately, which Draco couldn’t blame him for. After all, bedding the mudblood and having to see her face over breakfast must be rather dampening to the spirits. The only good thing was that the other Houses were losing their points even faster.

Then there was his father.

Draco knew what was up, though he was making an effort to appear even more stupid than usual. When Lucius Malfoy begins writing comments to Draco like “Be kinder to the poor Weasleys” and “Try to be more patient with dear Harry Potter”, it was obvious that the Dark Lord wasn’t as sure a bet as Malfoy senior had once thought.

Jumping ship was an ancient Malfoy tradition, after all. Though of course, his father had always called it “keeping your options open”. Still if his father thought that Potter was stupid enough to believe in a reformed Draco, then he had been in Azkaban far too long. The-git-who-lived might be irritating and a pain in the arse, but he wasn’t a total idiot.

Draco sighed, shoved back away from the Slytherin table and decided that a walk around the lake might do him some good. He put his books away and tucked his wand up his sleeve, and then he slipped out of the Great Hall and down the front steps of the school with his mind full and his stomach churning.

If things went really badly with the Dark Lord, then the Malfoys might have to depart England for the fairer climes and less harsh sentencing of French soil. No doubt, father had already begun the process of transferring assets out of the country. If that fool, Fudge, thought that freezing the Malfoy accounts in England meant anything than he was in for a bit of a surprise.

Draco himself owned several companies in China, Italy and France, not to mention the accounts in Gringott’s that were under carefully constructed layers of impenetrable ownership. His father was even wealthier and more paranoid than Draco was and the monies were hidden all over the world. No, win or lose, the Malfoys would survive with only their reputations any the worse for wear.

The day was bright and sunny, which irritated him. It ought to be gloomy and overcast to match his mood. God was an ironic bastard.
He stopped beside the lake and looked out at the vast expanse of gray water. He knew why he was fretting about all the rest of it. He was avoiding thinking about Susan Bones.

She was spherical, he thought with disgust. Not grossly obese, but certainly plump and round. Draco had always preferred willowy blondes and here he was being saddled with a plump girl with black pigtails and spectacles. She was the opposite of his ideal mate, spell or no spell.
Worst of all, she was a Hufflepuff.

No Malfoy in all history had ever married a Hufflepuff. It was unthinkable. It didn’t matter that her lineage was as pure as his own, if not as exalted. Malfoys married Slytherins or occasionally a particularly sneaky Ravenclaw, but never Hufflepuffs or Gryffindors. Not since Reynard Malfois had taken over as Slytherin Head of House after Salazar Slytherin had left the school, had a Malfoy ever demeaned himself in such a way.

Draco skipped a stone across the lake and cursed as it sank after only two plops. He enchanted the next one and sent it skimming across the surface. Much better.

“Can’t you do anything without cheating, Malfoy?” a far too familiar voice drawled behind him. The floodgates of anger were close to bursting and Draco decided that he didn’t give a damn what his father wanted just at that moment.

“Potter, what’s the matter, you have a few spare moments in between being arse-whipped by your wife?” He put all his disdain and venom into the words and was distantly surprised by the look of pure rage that crossed Potter’s face.

“You filthy little animal,” Potter screamed, his expression gone demented. It was only then that Draco realized that Weasley, Longbottom and several other Gryffindors were standing in a semi-circle behind Potter. His irritation and distraction had betrayed him into a foolish error. They all looked as furious as Potter and Draco grabbed his wand in a panic.

Weasley got off the first hex, but Draco’s was nearly simultaneous. He lost track of who did what to whom after that and then he went down under a pile of bodies and he lost track of everything.

Hermione sat before the fire in Hagrid’s hut, kicking her feet idly and gingerly sipping the petrol that Hagrid insisted was tea. It crossed her mind that the tea could cause a miscarriage and she set it down still nearly full on the small table beside her.

“Y’all right there, ‘Mione?” Hagrid asked gently and she flashed him a rueful smile.

“Yes, just trying to remember all the things the mid-witch advised me not to drink or eat during the pregnancy,” she returned, using the baby as an excuse not to drink the tooth-enamel destroying liquid.

“Sorry! I din’t think!” he slapped a meaty hand on his forehead and scrunched up his face in distress, but Hermione merely smiled.

“I’m fine, really Hagrid, I am.”

“You don’ look fine, ‘Mione,” Hagrid murmured back to her, and peered at her closely with a frown.

“I’m tired, depressed and hormonal, other than that, I am fine.”

“Is Professor Snape doin’ okay?”

“I am sure he’s fine, why?”

“Well, iffen it was me, I’d be scared ta death to be a father right about now, what with You-Know-who about an’ all. Not to mention tha he’s never been easy with folks, our Professor. Has ta be hard on ‘im ta imagine babies in his home and how he’ll do his job as a Da’ to ‘em.” Hagrid blew out his breath and Hermione stared at him for a long time. She had been so consumed by her own misery that she hadn’t really even discussed this pregnancy with her husband.

True, he was wrapped up in the ‘Rivening’ potion and in trying to find a way to publish his work on it without ending up with a very nasty sort of Kiss. Still, besides her occasional complaint about nausea and exhaustion, not one word had passed between them on the subject.
Something else occurred to Hermione.

“What about you, Hagrid, doesn’t the law apply to you as well?” Hermione was trying to remember her research over the summer, but couldn’t think of any exceptions to the law, besides the recently rescinded one for werewolves. Hagrid sighed gustily and shook his head at her.

“Ya have a good heart, ‘Mione, ta even think it, but there’ll be no bid made on me.” He sat down in the oversized chair across from her and shrugged off her enquiring gaze. “I’m a half-giant, ‘Mione, most folks think we’re next ta being animals.”

“What?” Hermione began, sitting bolt upright.

He raised a hand to forestall her angry retort and she subsided back into her chair.

“It’s true, ya know it is. Ya remember how it were when it all came out. Folks’re scared of Giants.” Hermione nodded slowly, she herself was still nervous around Grawp, regardless of his relative tameness. Giants were pretty terrifying creatures all around, and her mind still boggled at the very idea of the pairing that had resulted in Hagrid.

“But you’re not scary, Hagrid,” was the best she could do to muster up a defense for him and he smiled at her.

“An you’re not worse than Malfoy jus’ ‘cause your mum and dad are Muggles, but try tellin’ tha’ to some folks,” Hagrid shot back and Hermione nodded slowly, seeing the validity of his words.

“Its not fair,” she sighed. It seemed that she felt that way a lot of the time lately.

“It is wha’ it is, as Dumbledore says” Hagrid replied with a soothing tone and a little smile.

Sounds reached her ears now and she turned to the door with a mixture of irritation and anticipation. Harry and the others were late, which was annoying, but it would be nice to sit in Hagrid’s hut together like old times and pretend that nothing had changed.

When the door opened Hermione’s jaw dropped.

She was not looking forward to dragging the lot of them the whole way up to the hospital wing, but the collection of bumps, bruises, bloody noses and odd appendages told her that they would probably need Madame Pomfrey’s assistance once the adrenaline wore off.

Harry was sporting a rapidly purpling black eye and a serious of scratches on his face. Ron had a split lip and antlers. Neville had tentacles sticking out of his neck and a huge bump on his forehead. Dean’s clothes were torn and he was still twitching spasmodically from whatever hex had hit him.

They were also grinning from ear to ear.

Boys.