A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 42 – Entrances

Susan was almost reluctant to send the owl to Ginny. A mistress for Draco would have been a good idea and still might work in the long run, but the rather shaky trust that was being built between them would be ill served by such a manipulation.

The bird winged across the sky and then swept down and around the tower walls vanishing from Susan’s sight. She wasn’t sure it was a good idea to ask Ginny to hold off on that plan, but it made her feel better. That had to count for something, after all.
She leaned against the window frame and studied the slate gray sky with troubled eyes. She didn’t like Draco, certainly didn’t love him, but she was beginning to understand him. He’d been spoiled with the gift of everything he didn’t need and yet, for all of his mother’s smothering attention, he was starved for the things he really needed.

Boundaries, respect, praise for his achievements, these were all quite alien to him. Susan wasn’t at all certain what kind of father he would be. And yet…

The Spell had declared them soul mates and each day she learned more about him: discovering things that made him less the monster she had always imagined him to be and more a lonely, rather feral creature that needed taming.

She just wasn’t certain exactly how to go about taming him. Ginny seemed to have the trick of man wrangling down to an art, but Susan wasn’t Ginny. She had no confidence in her ability to “manage” Draco, as Ginny had put it.

“Susan?” his voice was filled with peevish bad humor and she sighed.

“Draco,” she drawled, with a frown. He paused as he crossed the threshold into their apartment’s front room and she could see him making a concerted effort not to snap at her.

“I can’t find my robes,” he continued, with a noticeably more polite tone. He was still looking rather irritated, but she could accept that.

“House Elves must have taken them for cleaning,” she reminded him. He frowned and started to say something and then once more stopped himself.

“I forgot that it was Saturday,” he answered with an almost civil tone. Something flashed across his features and he stomped a foot angrily. “I hate this!” he burst out and she nodded with a spurt of sympathy.

“I am not exactly dancing a jig over here, Draco,” she pointed out to him.

“I want my rooms back in Slytherin where we had our own Elves to do things for us,” he was actively pouting now and Susan sighed.

“Well, I would rather be in Hufflepuff with all the plants and lovely growing things around me, not to mention people that I actually like,” she ground out in reply, fighting to keep her temper in check. Draco blinked in surprise.

“You don’t like me?” he asked with a hurt look. Susan stared at him for long moments.

“Why would I like you, Draco? What have you ever done to make me like you in the slightest?” Her voice was raising and she tried to keep it under control, but it was hard.

“Well, I make sure that you have your fun first,” he grumbled, as though that were a big concession for him. Susan could feel her temper starting to slip.

“You are the most spoiled, selfish, brat that I have ever met! Do you ever think about anything other than yourself? Have my fun first? For Merlin’s sake, you had damn well better, because you fall asleep right after and I’d get nothing if you didn’t!” She throttled back her anger savagely and tried for a more reasonable tone. “You are rude, mean-spirited and nasty, Draco. No one likes you,” she concluded and watched his face go through several different expressions, none of which she could read.

“Some people do,” he shot back, but there wasn’t much strength behind his words.

“No, Draco, there is no one. Even Crabbe and Goyle just follow you because their fathers followed your father and they don’t know what else to do.” Each word was designed to wound and she could see the way they hit their target, making him flinch visibly from the hurtful truths. Part of her felt bad for him, she was a Hufflepuff and cruelty didn’t come easily to her, but she also knew that she had to find a way to pierce Draco’s self-absorption or she would never be able to live with him without wanting to poison his tea.

“They follow me because I am a Malfoy,” he retorted smugly, finding his balance again.

“Yes, but not because you are Draco,” she countered and he paused, baffled by the distinction. “Draco nobody likes you, nobody respects you, and nobody is afraid of you.” The last part seemed to gall him the most, as he flushed angrily at her words.

“Why are you having a go at me today?” he whinged with a pout.

“Because we need to plan and I don’t want you thinking like a pureblood snob, but like a sensible person,” she shot back. He opened his mouth to give a hot retort and then he snapped it shut again with an audible click.

“I am a pureblood snob, Susan, and I’m not going to ever stop being one,” he ground out with far more self-control than she had come to expect from him. “I probably am selfish and all the rest of the things that you called me. I am a Malfoy and we just aren’t like any other family. That doesn’t mean that I can’t plan with you what to do about our future.” It was probably the most conciliatory thing that he had ever said to her and even though it was also amazingly arrogant and delivered in a patient tone designed to make her aware of her mental retardation, she merely nodded in response.

“I can deal with that,” she answered him and hoped to Merlin that she really could. After all, this was going to be a really long century if she couldn’t.

Hermione was peevish and was restraining the urge to seek someone out for the sole purpose of starting a fight with them.
She was in her favorite rooms, the Raven suite, again. She wasn’t certain why she was so drawn to these indigo chambers, why they seemed so welcoming and safe. She was a Gryffindor and therefore red and gold ought to be her favorite colors, but the blue copper and silver of these rooms was soothing to her lacerated nerves.

She rubbed her belly and stared out the windows at the drifting seaweed. Pregnancy was horrible she decided. Some women seemed to have the knack of it and walked around in a smug cocoon of female superiority, looking contented and cool. Hermione felt like a land whale with watermelons for ankles. She hated every minute of the nausea, discomfort, and emotional whiplash that she was suffering through.

She dreaded having to do it all over again for a second child.

She liked Severus, even felt a fondness for him occasionally. Right after sex, she was certain that she adored him, but he always managed to pop that bubble with a sarcastic comment or a moment of thoughtless rudeness.

She also found that married life suited her. She enjoyed having someone to curl up to at night, someone to share the breakfast table with, who didn’t talk endlessly about Quidditch, and someone to have those conversations with that she always wanted to have with Ron and Harry, but never seemed to actually have with them.

What she didn’t like was the whole pregnancy thing. She supposed that she liked children, in an academic sense, but they hadn’t really been part of her plans. She had dreamed of scholarly success, of being a great witch, of lecturing circuits, and great magical discoveries. Nowhere in all of that had she planned on being turned into a brood mare.

“Madam?” Severus’ voice cut across her ruminations and she turned to catch him in the doorway with another labor-delaying potion. “Labor’s Breather” was the less than amusing name of the potion and Hermione just knew that it had been invented and named by a man. She took the bottle from him with a sigh and drank it down as fast as she could. Even with Severus’ additions to it, it still smelled like old socks and tasted like something the dog had chewed, buried, dug-up, eaten, thrown up and then buried again.

“Thank you.” She tried to sound gracious, but suspected that she just sounded irritated. Flailing about mentally, looking for a topic that wouldn’t set either of them off, she waved at the room. “So how come old Salazar built a set of rooms for a Ravenclaw in here?” she asked. Severus’ brows drew together and he hesitated before speaking.

“He didn’t. These were added…later.” It was a strangely incomplete explanation from the man who always had to have the answers to everything.

“Later? Who built them? I thought you said you couldn’t change things here?” The questions came tumbling out of her mouth as her curiosity was engaged.

“Not all areas are resistant to alteration. Salazar Slytherin was aware that future Heads of House might have different requirements than he did. His sense of humor rendered certain areas unalterable.” This part he sneered out with all his usual disdain for the overblown décor. “The rest varies in degree of malleability.” The last bit was delivered in more thoughtful tones. “I altered the sitting room a bit, fixed the library and my laboratory, of course. I left much else as it was.” He paused as though wary of admitting too much. “I felt no need to change everything.”

“But these rooms, did you make them?” she persisted.

“No.” He made the word quite final sounding and Hermione desisted. Sometimes he was just not going to tell her something and she could wheedle from now till doomsday and get absolutely nowhere with him.

Besides, she had other avenues of enquiry.

Sabine leant over the porcelain bowl with a grim feeling of familiarity. She hated this part and she was too damned old to go through all this again. Reliving her past meals just so the Magical World could have fewer squibs, might be worth it in the long run, but at the moment she was wondering what had ever possessed her to agree to Albus’ proposal.

Sure she was still fertile, as evidenced by her present discomfort, but if Merlin had intended a woman as old as she was to carry a child to term, he would have made it a damn sight easier.

“Are you all right, Sabine?” Albus called from outside the bathroom.

“Do I sound all right?” she snapped back at him in irritation. Why must men always ask the stupid questions? “I am bloody well having morning sickness!”

“That’s wonderful!” Albus replied, obviously not having actually heard what she had said. “I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl?” he continued with an annoyingly cheerful tone.

“Right now, it’s roast beef and potatoes,” she grumbled into the bowl. She really hated this part. Albus was burbling happily outside and Sabine began contemplating homicide.

Ginny propped one arm up and looked down into her husband’s sleeping face. Making love with him was different now. She wasn’t certain if it were better without the wolf because Remus was more gentle and sensitive or because she didn’t have the niggling fear that he would turn around and take a chunk out of her.

In other words, was it him being different or her being more relaxed? Either way, it had been a revelation. Their wedding night had been intense, passionate, and wild, but this was slower, more personal, in some strange way, and wholly satisfying.
If this is what wedded life held for her, she was content.

Well, almost content.

Despite months of marriage and plenty of protection-free sex, there was still no sign that Ginny had caught. She had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand she knew that she was way too young to be having babies and being a mother. On the other hand, every time she looked into Remus’ eyes she desperately wanted to have his child.

This was also something of a revelation. She had never had that particular urge with any of the other men that she had slept with. There had been no anticipatory tingle in her belly at the very thought of their making love and the results growing inside her. It was weird, she decided. She was seventeen and far too young for all of this.

Not the sex part, of course, just the babies.

Se blew out her breath and snuggling up to her husband went to sleep.

She would think about it all in the morning.

Severus spied on the Death Eater meeting from Salazar’s hidden room. Luckily for him they were holding it at Mulciber’s house where the bugs were thick and plentiful. He was trying not to fidget, but it was hard. Listening to the minutes being read from the last meeting and the endless rounds of protocol was so stupefyingly boring that he was having a hard time not falling asleep.
Bella’s voice jerked him back to full wakefulness.

“Malfoy has eluded us for now, but we shall have him soon enough,” she predicted with a confidence that Severus found entirely unwarranted. Lucius was a thousand times cannier that Bellatrix was and if he had gone to ground it would take far more brains than were currently available to Voldemort’s followers to track him down.

“In the meantime,” Voldemort hissed, “I want to know what progress has been made on rigging the elections for Minister of Magic. I want one of my people in that position.”

“Well, as you know, my lord, rigging a Magical election is rather difficult,” Nott temporized.

“I don’t want excuses, I want results,” came the wholly unsurprising response. It amazed Severus that someone like Voldemort had reached as far as he had. It just went to show that mindless ruthlessness and the willingness to do whatever it took to get power, trumped brains and planning every time.

Severus knew exactly how he would go about becoming master of the world. He had conceived the plan and then discarded it quickly thereafter. Anyone with any foresight had to see that ruling the world was a tedious and thankless task. Severus was far too intelligent to want to have that much aggravation thrust upon him.

“We are working on several options,” Rudolfus answered soothingly. Which, Severus was sure, meant that they had no clue whatsoever on how to accomplish the task.

“Indeed,” Voldemort replied, his voice indicating that he had much the same understanding that Severus did.

The talk turned to other things and Severus listened with a sigh of utter boredom. Why did the stupid people have to have all the power?

Emma Granger hung up the phone with a heavy sigh. George looked up at her with an enquiring look.

“Well, with Fudge out of the way, there is a possibility the Marriage Law will be abolished by the next Minister, but no one is quite certain when that will be. Apparently no Minister of Magic has ever resigned before, though apparently one was killed by Ogres once so there is some precedent for mid-term emergency elections,” she answered his look.

“So no hope for any of the girls presently married or in line to be married?” he asked.

“Well, according to Andromeda, there is no such thing as divorce for witches and wizards, so any marriages already consummated are considered permanent, regardless.” Emma was uncomfortable with a society that gave its married couples no way out of a poor choice or bad mistake, but there it was.

“What about a hold on further marriages until the Minister is sorted out?” George frowned and cocked his head.

“No one knows whose job it is to order such a thing and they are all rather busy covering their asses, from what she could gather,” Emma replied with a grimace and a snort.

“Bugger,” he spat out with a certain amount of venom.

“My thoughts exactly,” she agreed with an equally sour expression.

Bill sipped the Turkish coffee gratefully, listening to the cheerful babble of the family around him with a feeling of quiet happiness. This was what curse breaking was all about.

Sarit Yidoni, looking younger and more peaceful than he had ever seen her, was sitting across from him, also listening to the burbling of the family and her expression was thoughtful, rather than content.

“It’s quite a change, isn’t it?” he asked her gently and she shot him a sharp look.

“It’s a good one, but I wonder at the cost,” she replied pointedly. He sighed and leaned back farther into the intricately carved old chair. For an ancient heirloom it was rather comfortable, almost as comfortable as the beaten and weathered, old, stuffed chair in his parents’ house. He missed home, he missed his lovely fiancée and he really wished the worries and fears of war were long past.

“I wonder too,” he admitted. “Any thoughts?” He eyed her with amusement, since he knew that she had done nothing but think in the three days since he had broken the curse. Her lips twisted sardonically.

“Many, but none are very productive. My Seer abilities have been waning as I grow old and with no Seer in the younger generations, I have no one else to ask for guidance and aid.” She said this to him reluctantly; he could see how much effort it took her to admit to any amount of weakness. He simply nodded, knowing that her allowing him to see that frailty was a statement of trust. He felt a curious reluctance to fail her in that.

He really wondered who she would have been if her mother hadn’t cast that curse. It was a real pity that she had been twisted and bent by it for so many years. Even with it broken, she was still bowed down under the weight of all that came before.

And they still had to figure out what to do about Voldemort, which was a problem bigger than both of them.

“I think that we need to speak to Professor Dumbledore,” Bill admitted. Sarit gave him a very sour look.

“Isn’t he the one that got us into all of this?” she grumbled.

“Precisely the reason that he should be made to get us out of it,” Bill shot back with a quick smile.

Sarit shrugged, as if to say “What the hell” and then looked out over her progeny.

“Children, we are going back to England,” she announced and they all stilled to look at her.

There was a long pause as the information sank in and then they nodded to their matriarch.

“It’s about time,” Avram muttered under his breath. Bill was the only one near enough to hear him and he suppressed a snort at the boy’s tone.

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more, he thought a trifle grimly. Time to go home and see what Albus Dumbledore had up his sleeve.