What It Means To Be

by spinner

3

The rush of customers at Sandy's Bakery was surprising for this hour of the night, but Harry knew that was probably because this was the best bakery in Hogsmeade, and certain items were half-price after 6 pm.  In a village filled with poor university students, anything half-price was bound to be a hit.  While holding Mordred in his grip, Harry stared around the small store, studying adverts, wondering about the notices on the bulletin board.  He could post an ad here for an assistant.  He was in Sandy's place often enough, around Hogsmeade as well on an almost daily basis, and people were becoming accustomed to seeing him.  For the most part, the year-around inhabitants had stopped staring at him openly.  The students were another matter, but thankfully the decorum of others usually kept the students in line.  Not always, but usually.  Other patrons in the bakery were watching Harry and Hermione discretely, and there it was again, that social disapproval of Hermione.  Where was it coming from?  Harry bounced Mordred on his hip and concentrated on the adverts, and on the soft Christmas music playing in the background. 

Someone had damaged Draco's modest page, writing in block letters "DEATH EATER SCUM" over the fine print boxes and detailed lists that Harry had seen Draco drawing by hand on the large table in their room.  The advert for the "Malfoy Shoppe" had been nice little work of art, really, showing tiny bottles of all shapes and sizes and colors, representing the very objects that Harry knew were sitting on the shelves in the apothecary store.  Draco had had so much fun coloring the bottles that Harry had been tempted to get him a coloring book for Christmas.  It was rude to have defaced Draco's delicate and pain-staking work with such crude, heavy letters.  It really was starting to sink in on Harry how many people hated Draco Malfoy, and perhaps not without reason, Harry sighed.   But how was it fair that Malfoy and Hermione seemed to be viewed with the same contempt, often from the same people?  

While thinking on Draco, Harry's nerves came alive, and he darted his head up, staring out across the street with a twinge.  Up the road, past the fronts of several stores decorated with Christmas finery, and through the throngs of people hurrying around shopping for last-minute gifts, Harry felt something was about to happen.  There was a twinge, a disturbance, a wave of ill will.   

Hermione didn't feel a thing.  She was running on about Brim and Burnie.  She hadn't closed her mouth since they entered the store.  It was rather like the Christmas music,  the constant sound of Hermione's voice.  It was cheerful and inoffensive, and evaporated almost the moment it was heard.  Harry couldn't bear to interrupt.  When she spoke the most, she was happiest, and that's how he liked to see her.  Besides, her hair was growing again.  Something had clicked between her and Owen's son that made Hermione all warm inside, and Hermione's hair was growing, which meant her internal magic was righting itself, and she was becoming whole again.  Is that what it meant to be in the bloom of love?  What a wretched time of year to be in love, Harry thought to himself, watching Hermione talk and smiling just a little to himself.  That was what had triggered 'daddy mode' in Owen.  Stoneburne could obviously tell that Hermione and Burnie had hit it off too.  If Burnie was as happy as Hermione seemed, Owen was smart enough to know that Hermione was the reason. 

Burnie had had an interview for a beginning internship at the British Museum in London, owing to his translation expertise, but he was having a difficult time navigating in the Muggle world, with which he had very little experience.  Brim, on the other hand, had managed to get a clerical position with the Daily Prophet in their Hogsmeade office, but it was clear she didn't enjoy it whatsoever.   Hermione thought that she and Harry should devote a few hours each weekend in taking Burnie and Brim both safely around in the Muggle world, getting them acquainted with the alien but parallel reality. 

Hermione hoped this little tiff about useful employment wouldn't keep Brim and Burnie mad at each other very long, or keep Brim mad at her father for giving her brother permission to find employment while she had had to wait until she was officially seventeen and didn't need parental permission.  Things would calm down before Christmas, she hoped, because Brim might fuss and argue a lot, but Hermione was certain that she was also protective of Burnie too. 

Apparently Brim had already had a stern talk with Hermione about not breaking Burnie's heart, as if Granger might be planning to do such an awful thing to such a wonderful boy.  The talk had been very oblique, not involving actual threats, but it had revolved instead around the simply-fascinating curse book Brim had found at Grimwood in the most-forbidding corner of the Dark Arts Room.  The grim novella detailed any number of subtle techniques for exacting revenge on those who wronged you and your loved ones, or on loved ones who had wronged you.  It was called The Fortunato Handbook, and Brim had read it cover to cover several times since Halloween.  Like her mother, she was very skilled with blessings and hexes.  She really preferred hexes though.  Much more satisfying.  They came to her quite naturally.   She dreamed hexes.  She ate hexes.  She practiced hexes day and night. 

"Harry, are you listening to a word I'm saying?" Hermione asked, not angry, but rather amused with him.  Harry handed Mordred to her.

"Could you…..just for a moment…..I have to….I'll…."

With that, Harry was out the front door of the bakery, hurrying along the street.  Hermione had expected him to rush to the restroom.  He had the smallest bladder of any human being she knew.  When he had left the bakery, she had been utterly perplexed.  Harry touched a side wall of the next row of stores across the street, and suddenly broke out into a run, dodging in and around other shoppers.  Hermione gaped out the front window of Sandy's bakery, watching Harry disappear.  Mordred watched him as well, and then stared up at Hermione, blinking at her as if waiting an explanation. It occurred to her that she hadn't seen Teddy catch up to them yet.  They had left the library, and she had seemed to have been on their tails.  A shadow moved out of the crowd, following Harry's direction, and the swinging staff was visible.  Hermione relaxed, knowing Teddy was on the job, whatever Harry was up to.  

"I haven't a clue what he's up to either.  Don't take it personally," Granger smiled at the littlest Snape.  Mordred clung to Hermione, and turned his attention back into the store.  Their place in the queue had been gobbled up, not that it mattered.  Hermione stood behind the last witch, and amused Mordred by talking to him.  "Harry's like that.  You must have noticed.  Easily distracted.  It's not us.  It's him.  Perfectly rude behavior, if it had been anyone else.  Hope there are corn muffins left.  Queue is moving fast.  This won't take long.  But just you wait.  He's going to hear about this.  I might not be as keen on adventure as he and Ron, but I like a tad of fun now and again too.  Bet you'll like adventure too when you grow up."

Mordred lifted up a long string from Hermione's jacket hood and stuffed it in his mouth.  She pulled her head to the side to make him let go.  Her efforts did not work however. 

"He's at that age," the witch in front of her said with a funny smile.  "Everything they touch goes in their mouths until they figure out the difference between sweet and bitter, chewy and crunchy, eat and don't eat.  It's their way of exploring the world."

"How many children do you have?" Hermione asked her.  It was only polite. 

"I'm on the second batch now.  I have to say, I prefer grandchildren to children.  He's a healthy one, isn't he?  A fine, lovely boy."

"Can you say 'hello'?" Hermione urged Mordred, who stared back and forth between Hermione and the nice witch. 

"Daddy," Mordred said.  The other witch laughed happily, and petted Mordred on top of the head.  She waved and then turned around to face the counter because she was about to be served.   

"Daddy will be right back," Hermione promised the youngster.  Other patrons sneered at her, and she ignored them.  Mordred began to bounce around in her grip.  He reached forward and smeared both hands down the glass casing, behind which rolls, cakes, cookies, and treats were protected.  How had Molly Weasley kept so many of these creatures in line at one time, Granger wondered to herself sadly.  She found Mordred alone was more than a handful at times.  Maybe she wasn't as maternal as she had always thought herself to be.  She tried very hard, both with Mordred and with Brigit now too, but children were chaotic, and chaos didn't sit well with her.  It was hard to embrace chaos when your life was all about what could be written and therefore studied and compiled and studied again and held to a type of order that was comforting, reassuring.  Not that she hadn't endured enough chaos in her time, especially considering who her best mate was, but she endured chaos as one endures a visit to a dentist—with the knowledge that it could only last so long and would be at an end in due time.  There's no telling what years and years of chaos at the hands of a child, or for that matter, children in the plural, might do to her sanity, let alone her love of harmony and order.  Why couldn't life be like the beautiful baked objects under the glass cases? Hermione liked an organized world.  Could children be organized sufficiently to be allowed into her orb of life?  Hermione searched the hand-written placards until she located corn muffins.  The plate held a dozen and a half.   

"What can I get for you, Miss?"  the young woman behind the counter chimed in.  Sandy herself was helping the witch in front of Hermione.  The young woman who was helping Hermione bore such a resemblance to the head bakery that Granger assumed she must be a relative, a cousin, a sister perhaps.  A sister with an American accent?  Not possible, was it?  Perhaps a cousin then.  Wouldn't that have been nice though, to have had a sister, Hermione thought wistfully.   Maybe her own mother had had but one child because she couldn't bear the disorder that might have come with two children, three children, four children and so on.  Hermione decided she should talk to her mother about it sometime.  Mordred reached out for the sample platter, managing to snatch a tiny section of unnamed cake in each hand before Sandy waggled a finger at him and judiciously drew the platter out of his reach.   Hermione wanted to apologize for Mordred's behavior, but Sandy brushed it off without a word, laughing to herself as she returned to her own customer.

"One of the Selkirk bannocks, and half a dozen corn muffins," Hermione said. 

"Right up!"

Outside in the cold again, with the wind beginning to pick up, Hermione made the mistake of letting Mordred hold the loaf of bread while she searched around for a clue where Harry had gone.  Mordred tested out an edge of the bannock, decided it wasn't bad, and continued salivating and chewing on the edge of the flat loaf.   There was a commotion going on up the street in the very direction where Harry had vanished, and using no more than resigned intuition, Hermione set off that way.  Smoke was rising into the air, and where there's smoke, there's Potter and chaos, more often than not.

"What did he get himself into this time?!" Hermione thundered.  She was mumbling none-too-quietly as she crossed the street and stomped her way through the crowds.  She didn't end her muttering until she stopped in front of Malfoy's apothecary shoppe, from which the smoke was rising.  Her boots crunched on glass shards.  Mordred's happy noises stopped.  He gasped and dropped her loaf of bread into the wreckage at their feet.  He immediately teared up, and put a fist in his mouth as if he was about to sob.  

"Stand back, Miss!"

One of the Aurors guarding the scene was quick to guide her off the sidewalk into the street where other people were milling about for a gander at the carnage.   Was it the fact that she was a woman, or the fact she was a woman holding a baby that made him bristle with protectiveness?  Hermione's brain tried to reconcile what she was seeing.  They hadn't heard anything inside the bakery!  Nothing at all!  There was obviously damage here from an attack though.  The entire front window was missing again, but there was more.  There was fire and smoke damage, and the stench of burnt herbs.  Noxious fumes from vaporized potions were wafting around.  There were more Aurors spread out at the scene.  Hermione shouted Harry's name and pushed her way past the man who tried to keep her back.

"Harry!" Hermione shouted again.  The inside of the apothecary shoppe was a complete loss.  The frosty fringes of a Frigidarium spell were crawling up the walls, fighting with the remnants of the raging inferno that would have claimed a block of houses if it had not been gobbled by more powerful magic.  Shelves of products had gone up in flames and then been frozen over with water and cold at once.  Icicles hung from the damaged shelving.  The scarred and scorched floorboards cried in protest when Hermione raced across them.  She was battling her memories of the Burrow as it crashed downward into ashes and dust.  Her eyes were tearing up, and not just from the acrid taste of the air.  Mordred was as relieved to find Harry as she was, she imagined. 

Harry was sitting on the floor between the half-demolished fireplace and the high wooden counter.  He was plainly furious.  Both he and Draco were paradoxically soaking wet and covered in brick dust.  They had been pelted by the remnants of the destroyed fireplace.   Harry was holding onto Draco's shoulder, visually studying his face.

"Potter!  Let go of me!  I'm….it's….fine!" Malfoy growled, fighting back his emotions.  

"You are not," Harry disagreed angrily.  Hermione got closer, and for the first time realized that both of them were singed along their backs and the tops of their heads.  Harry's coat was blackened.  Draco also had a large knot forming in the middle of his forehead. 

"Harry!  Are you all right?" Hermione demanded, landing Mordred on the floor between Harry and Draco.  Harry nodded to her question.  "Draco!  You need a doctor this minute!" she declared.

"Where the hell is that medic!?" Harry turned to demand from the Auror who had tried to prevent Hermione from entering the ruined store.  The Auror was a non-descript fellow, somewhere between thirty and forty, somewhere between handsome and average, no one you would remember again if you saw him twice.  He didn't want to upset Harry Potter if he could avoid doing so, but his orders were to keep everyone back from danger.  He couldn't leave that post to locate a medi-wizard faster, no matter how obviously infuriated Harry was becoming.  

"Teddy was following you through the crowd.  Where is she?" Hermione asked Harry. 

"She tore out of here chasing someone, but I haven't seen her since," Harry explained.

"I don't need a….what in the- - -," Draco whimpered when his eyes went crossed and he raised a bruised and bloodied hand to his forehead. 

"Get that fucking medic right this minute!" Harry shouted, not even aware he was using a Muggle word for a wizard position, or that a swear word had slipped through.    All he knew was that Draco needed help, and even if Draco could handle the pain, being in shock and half-dazed, Harry himself was about to faint from the intense agony radiating inside his own skull.   The Auror was turning gray with dismay, and he wasn't the only one. 

Mordred's eyes got huge.  He'd never heard such a tone out of Potter, let alone such a word.  Hermione scooped Mordred up into her grip.  She had completely forgotten the corn muffins, the bag of which was lying on its side next to Draco. 

"I'll get Snape," Granger promised.  She grabbed a pinch of Floo powder and stood in the middle of the wrecked fireplace.  "Ravensrood!"  she shouted.  She and Mordred disappeared into a flash of eye-jolting green.  Harry could feel Draco glaring at him.

"You may need to start planning a fire sale," Harry joked weakly, trying to take the edge of Malfoy's building fury.

"This is all your fault," Draco managed to grind out the words, holding one hand over the growing knot on his forehead. 

"Yes, I couldn't agree more," Harry nodded.   "Did you see anything suspicious?"

"Other than you throwing yourself on top of me?"

"You're welcome," Harry huffed.  "Damned blind luck the store was empty, and no one else was hurt."

"It's never exactly packed.  I felt Crabbe, but I did not see him," Draco admitted.

"He must be learning concealment spells," Harry replied.  "That must be who Teddy is chasing.  I don't envy him if she catches him."

The Aurors gathered around the front of the store were doing a great job of keeping curious people away from the ruined glass and burned wood, but it was obvious they were in no hurry where the emergency medical care was concerned.   Harry wanted to go over and shake some sense into them, but that would mean moving away from Draco, and he didn't want to run the risk of Malfoy losing his angry composure entirely. 

Not a second later, a flash lit the small store.  Apparition magic, Harry recognized even though he had been looking the other way.  The relief that flooded Draco's face reassured Harry that help had arrived. 

"Stop right where you are!!" the Auror from the front door demanded, whirling around with his wand. 

"Stupid idiot!" Harry shouted at him, putting up a barrier against the spell that the Auror had hurled at the three shapes that appeared.  Snape had remained where he was, confident that Harry's barrier would hold, but Volkova pushed through Harry's barrier and immediately set into the Aurors, employing words from at least three languages. 

"Nothing out of the ordinary, I hope?" Snape commented to Malfoy as Volkova raged at the Aurors, who cowered like whipped dogs.   Draco smiled meekly up at him, and Snape remained close to be reassuring.  "All your hard work up in smoke again," Severus added, staring around ruefully. 

Teddy reappeared, entering through the back of the ruined shoppe, through the area Draco used for completing potions and concoctions on-site.  She was huffing for breath, and had to pause for a moment to right herself.

"Lost him in the paths through M&M!  Bloody hell!  Bloody god-damned hell!"

"It's all right," Harry soothed.  "Draco needs help.  We'll chase the bastard later."

"I'd've never lost him before!  Gods!  I am getting old!" Teddy wailed.  "Oh, here.  What's the matter with you then, eh?"

Teddy took gentle hold of Draco's hand and moved it out of her way to get a look at his forehead.  She just as casually ushered Harry out of her way with a tilt of her head.

"Thank you, honestly," Draco whispered to her. 

"Does your head ache?" Teddy asked. 

"A touch," Draco admitted.

"We'll try for the night-creepers another time," Snape offered.

"Master, you said they bloom for only three days around the solstice.  That's all," Draco protested.  "I'm fine.  We'll go."

"If you're sure," Snape questioned.  Teddy's expression didn't waver. 

"I'm sure. I'm fine.  Fine.  AEEEEIEEEEAAAEEEEE!" Malfoy wailed as Teddy put her wand to the front of his head and her hand to the back.  A blue healing spell spun around Draco's skull as his scream died away.

"All right, love.  All done.  Nothing to it," Teddy hushed him with a gentle voice.  "You're likely to have a dull headache a day or two.  Nothing to worry about."

Harry gave her an approving smile, half in love with her for a heartbeat, and thanked her without words, putting his hand on her arm.  

"I'll check you both over at home.  We're best away from here," Teddy commented, helping Malfoy to his feet.  She turned the young men towards the fireplace, and studied the flash fire scorching that ran across both of them.

"Thanks so much," Draco said. 

"Late in the year for a cook-out, isn't it?" she joked.

"We're a bit warm, that's all," Harry insisted, shifting around in his clothes and wishing she wouldn't frown that way.  It so reminded him of Molly Weasley, and he didn't need that reminder right here and now.  Severus put a hand in Harry's locks, watching them rebuild themselves before his very eyes.  Or maybe he was being comforting without words, knowing what horrors were in Harry's heart. 

"I need to get out of these wet clothes," Draco said, avoiding Teddy's searching eyes.  Volkova finished bawling out the Aurors and tore into the medi-witch who entered the destroyed shoppe through the wrecked front door.  The medic dropped her emergency bag in surprise at being verbally attacked out of nowhere. 

"It takes you ten minutes to respond to an emergency medical situation?!  What in the nine hells were you doing?!"  Volkova shouted.

"Appendectomy," the witch hissed.  "Who are you?"

"What about the others?" Volkova howled.  "Are you the only medical professional for miles and miles?!"

"I'm all right, Anna," Draco insisted.  Volkova came over to Malfoy's side and spoke to Teddy.

"How is he?" she whispered.

"He'll be fine.  Crispy around the edges.  Nothing serious."

"How is your head?" Volkova asked, petting Draco tenderly.  

"It's nothing serious," Draco reiterated.  Anna ran her fingers through his messed-up, singed hair. 

"You're no judge.  You could have a concussion.  I've seen it happen.  Why are you all wet?"

"If my patient will come this way?" the medi-witch urged. 

"He's not going anywhere with you!  I wouldn't let you treat my dog!" Volkova snapped, putting a protective arm around Draco's shoulders.

"You can't leave the scene," the lead Auror insisted.  "We need to take a statement."

"I'll give you a statement," Volkova threatened, waving her balled-up fist and wand at him.  She and Draco vanished into a flash of apparition magic, and Snape finally managed a smile.  He hoped in vain that he never appeared that frothy with protection for a loved one! Of course he had, but he hoped not, all the same. 

"Don't worry.  He's in good hands," Teddy confirmed to the medi-witch, who seemed to want to turn her attention to Harry at that point.  Teddy interceded quickly, almost possessively.   "What about you, Master?  Nicks?  Cuts?  Bites?  Scrapes?"

"Could you illuminate the details of the situation?" Snape asked in a calm tone as Harry shook his head no to Teddy's questions. 

"I'm fine.  Standard rescue.  I didn't even have to break down the door," Harry said with a nonchalant, flashing smile.  He picked up his bag of muffins, and shook the mangled crumbs around, hoping whole muffins had not been a part of Sparks' stuffing plan.  He'd hate to disappoint her. 

"We're going to need a statement before you can leave," the lead Auror demanded, pulling out a pad of paper and a quill.  Harry carried his bag of crumbled muffins towards the man, and carefully retrieved the bannock loaf from the sidewalk. 

"I'll be happy to give you a statement," Harry offered, dusting off the worst of the glass and dust and debris.  Mordred's teeth marks made him happy and sad at once. 

"Master," Teddy whispered in warning.  She and Snape both had sensed Harry's charisma spell engaging.  It might have been hard to see the indigo aura in this light, but standing in the ebb and flow of Potter's powerful magic was like smelling pungent incense and drinking strong wine together.  Severus felt giddy, and he wasn't sure if it was from the energy Potter was emanating, or from the thrill of watching him take such command of the situation.  Teddy looked worried, but then she often did.

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