Update to Fairies, Fathers, and Forevers Part 2: The Last Supper

[crystalgreene.livejournal.com]

Originally posted by crystalgreene at Update to Fairies, Fathers, and Forevers Part 2: The Last Supper

In case you're following this WiP, I posted two new chapters (more to come soon). I very much hope you'll like them, and I'd like to invite you to take a look on AO3 or here:

Chapter 2: The Three Broomsticks


I haven’t been to the Three Broomsticks since I was a student. I haven’t bothered to go there after I came back to Hogwarts so far. As a matter of fact, I haven’t been to Hogsmeade at all, not once since I started out as Professor for Defence against the Dark Arts in September.
I rather keep to myself at Hogwarts these days. When I first moved back into the castle, I guess I somehow expected a revival of old times. But Hogwarts has changed. It’s not just the renovation, the shining new classrooms, bright and pleasant and reminiscent of twenty-first century Muggle schools. I don’t know. Hogwarts just isn’t what it used to be. Or maybe it’s me who isn’t. Of course it’s me who isn’t; I’m not a student anymore. Which means that it’s painfully apparent now that I’m not a people person.
I like my job, I like my students. Very nice kids, eager, intelligent. Much more pleasant and well-behaved than we used to be. Still, outside of classes and the meals in the Great Hall I prefer to just stay in my apartment. Mark papers and read up on the syllabus, that kind of thing. Videophone Draco, of course. I pay Hagrid a visit every Tuesday, and I Apparated in from Godric’s Hollow for Gryffindor’s Quidditch match against Slytherin on the first weekend in November. I cheered for Gryffindor, I waved a lion flag, but it’s not the same. I just don’t belong like I used to. Not to the school, not to Gryffindor. I’ve never even set foot in the new Gryffindor common room. Why would I, I’m just a teacher. Minerva told me she wouldn’t want to replace the Head of Gryffindor, a nice lady by the name of Higgins who teaches Charms, because staff wouldn’t take well to any kind of privileging, and I told her to please stop the gratuitous explaining for both our sakes.

I don’t really know the rest of the professors. Most of them are new faces, and older than me by at least a decade or two. I guess I could make the effort and try and mingle more. Draco says I should. He says dark and brooding is all very well, but when my looks will fade I’ll just be Snape reincarnated on a bad hair day if I don’t take care. But yeah. Somehow I don’t seem to be getting round to doing the social thing.
There’s only five people from the old days, apart from Madam Pomfrey. Minerva McGonagall, Blaise Zabini, Sybil Trelawney, Hagrid, and Neville Longbottom. Minerva will never be a colleague, not in my head. Even if we are on a first-name basis these days. Zabini will always be the epitome of the stuck-up Slytherin to me, even if Draco claims he’s perfectly nice. Trelawney is at sea, Hagrid is Hagrid.
Which leaves Neville. Yeah, I guess Neville Longbottom, Head of Herbology, is the one person who’s my colleague in the real sense of the word.
I go see him every Sunday night when I get back from Godric’s Hollow. As it is, I’ve got a standing invitation to his lodgings in Greenhouse Three. As far as I’m concerned, just ambling downhill to Neville’s for a cuppa something is the perfect social evening. It’s all I need.

But that’s not the real reason why I never once went to the Three Broomsticks these last three months, and why I feel this growing unease about spending the evening there instead of at Greenhouse Three tonight.

The real reason is Madam Rosmerta. The pub’s bustling, genial landlady.
Rightfully, she’d rot in Azkaban.
I understand she never formally was a Death Eater, but in my book she’s something way worse. She was on Voldemort’s payroll and always kept it hidden, at Draco’s expense.

I remember the moment I first heard about Draco having used Rosmerta to kill Dumbledore. Heard it from Draco himself, the night of Dumbledore’s death, up on the Astronomy Tower. He spelled that whole concocted story out to Dumbledore, to make it real, to affirm that he was a Death Eater who fulfilled Voldemort’s orders. It was all he could do at the time to keep his mother safe. But I didn’t see that then, I believed him, like everyone did, even Dumbledore. Dumbledore, who had said it himself, Draco, you are not a killer.
And he never was, he never imperiused Rosmerta to kill Dumbledore with that cursed necklace and poisoned mead. He was forced to communicate with her, he created those Protean coins to show he was working towards the goal Voldemort had assigned to him. But he never fabricated those treacherous gifts and sent them to Dumbledore. Rosmerta did, acting in her own style, under her own steam, probably to score points with the Dark Lord. Only her schemes proved less than clever and went awry, so she opted to never take credit for them. And after Voldemort’s downfall, it naturally suited her only too well that her role had never come to light.
Things never got cleared up. There was no hearing of evidence in court about any of this at Draco’s trial. Draco says he felt there was little point in dragging Rosmerta down with him, not with the overwhelming evidence that seemed to prove his involvement with the Dark Lord. He never defended himself against any charges, thanks to his damned pride, and he doesn’t want the past stirred up again.
I’ve tried to make him file suit for slander against journalists who still refer to him as The Death Eater Who Attempted to Kill Dumbledore Three Times Over. Of course there’s those people who’d throw mud at him. Rosmerta would do anything to hold up she was imperiused. She’d probably produce loads of old friends of hers as character witnesses, and just as many old Hogwarts enemies of Draco’s who’d readily swear he’s a fiend in human shape. It would be ugly. And Draco says there still is no point. But there is; the point would be to do away with the clouds hanging over his name. To clear it, once and for all, conclusively. To end the murmurs that else will continue forever.
But he’s got this essential shyness in him, for all his authority and poise in his professional life and trustfulness and proclivity for creative insults with me. He doesn’t want to be in the media, not if he can help it at all. And I have accepted I mustn’t put him under pressure. Now less than ever. And if that means brooking the freedom of Three Broomsticks’ landlady and having to let her serve me a butterbeer in her pub like I didn’t know what she is, that’s what I’ll do. –


I hasten down Hogsmeade’s foggy main street. I’m twenty minutes late. The flight to Hogwarts took longer than usual tonight because of a nasty west wind. I left Buckbeak in his stable behind Hagrid’s hut with his dinner of mice, then went down to the village straight away.
As I tug my damp cloak up to my throat, I have a vision of Draco, warm and malleable and so beyond compare with his magical mix of male sweetness and Malfoy insolence, and the yearning cuts through me like red-hot steel. Three hours after we said goodbye I miss him like it’s been a year.
I go past the pub without noticing, I only spot it when I turn around and walk back up the street. There’s just one jagged broomstick left of the old sign, and there seems to be no light in the building. When I peek through the cracked windows of the front door, I can make out a crumpled slip of paper taped to the tinted glass from within claiming the pub to be open, and a dim shine. I push at the door. It opens into what used to be a space of instant comfort and well-being, alight with twinkling torches and cheery conviviality.
It’s a dank, dark cave now. A single naked bulb casts its light on the bleakness of empty tables and chairs, scattered about like someone meant to clean the room, then decided not to.
“What do you want, mister!”
A fat old woman has emerged from somewhere in the back.
It’s her. Madam Rosmerta, distended to a grotesquely bloated, tattered version of her old self. And stripped of all pretensions at warmth, like her pub.
“We’re closed,” she barks from across the room.
“It says open on your sign.”
“What do you want?”
She eyes me from sunken, bleary eyes.
Of course she knows who I am. People still do. And she can’t have missed the news that I’m with Draco Malfoy these days. She thinks I’m here to seek justice for him, as would befit the legend that is Harry Potter.
I wish I was.
“A butterbeer,” I say. I grab a rickety chair, pull it up to one of the tables and sit down. She keeps her gaze fixated on me for another half a minute or so, as if she thinks sitting down is how I prepare for a duel. Eventually she turns to the dust-covered keg on the counter and draws a beer from the tap. It coughs and spits like it’s opening for the first time in years. –


At a quarter to nine, I’m still sitting alone in front of my full mug. It’s too appalling to even touch. Rosmerta is hovering about in the back, like she’s waiting for Ron as hard as I do. I wish I hadn’t left my Y-pad behind with Buckbeak in my hurry. Eventually I get up and take the paper from the hook by the door. It’s one of those jinxed versions of the Daily Prophet you sometimes find in cafés and pubs, that are updated daily and need to be exchanged only every other week or so. This one looks and feels like Madam Rosmerta hasn’t replaced it since the days I came here as a Hogwarts student. I gingerly straighten the greasy front page, and the next moment I forget all about Madam Rosmerta losing her grip.

Death Eaters. The grinning masks of Death Eaters. They stand in a half circle against the backdrop of the London skyline by night, the Shard jutting up into the black sky in the distance. In the centre, there’s a hooded figure passing around a goblet filled with what looks like blood. I watch, thunderstruck, and then the man turns to me and it’s Voldemort.
There’s Voldemort in today’s paper, and it’s not an archive picture.
The clip starts over. Again, the Death Eaters take turns sipping from that goblet, their masks moving like real faces, again there’s Voldemort, smiling his sickening snaky smile. And I realize it isn’t Voldemort after all, it’s a man wearing a mask, too, or very elaborate magical make-up. But he’s not Voldemort.
I want to hope, hope that this isn’t as bad as it looks.
But it’s so much worse.

Special edition: The Heir of Voldemort declares War

Oliver Wood dies in show killing in the early evening.

A new terrorist cell has stepped into the limelight with the brutal murder of Oliver Wood, captain of the National Quidditch Team. The killers call themselves the True Death Eaters, invoking the late Lord Voldemort’s followers, and they wear the same masks. The difference: These new Death Eaters seek the spotlight. In the early evening they stabbed twenty-six-year-old Oliver Wood, then drank his blood on camera as he was dying of his injuries in their midst tied to a pole on top of a London skyscraper. The crime was live streamed to the terrorists’ site, heirofvoldemort.wiz, as well as to hundreds of hijacked Y-pad sites and Telewizard channels. Hundreds of Thousands of viewers watched in real time as the criminals shared a goblet filled with the popular keeper’s blood and bottled it in vials, too. Their proclaimed agenda: To extract Wood’s renowned reflexes from his blood and make them transferable onto others by means of a specially designed potion. The terrorists’ leader, who calls himself Heir of Voldemort, claimed that a team of potioneers had already successfully created a similar potion from the blood of Ken Jones, 38, who went missing two weeks ago. Jones, Ex-Chaser with Puddlemere United, was the only Quidditch player to ever score a goal from across the whole length of the pitch, which equals five-hundred feet. A video of six Death Eaters demonstrating their ability to do the same was broadcasted minutes after the live stream of Wood’s murder.
More killings are obviously scheduled to take place. Prominent personalities of the wizarding community who speak for tolerance and diversity, expressly or through their lifestyle, will be targeted and tapped for their magical talents. Every traitor with a wizard for a father should be warned, so the exact words of the man wearing the mask of Voldemort. This threat is also the only clue so far as to the magical technology behind the new blood potions.
According to heirofvoldemort.wiz, the terrorists’ goal is to “gain ultimate supremacy and establish a new world order that will end the depraved new ways of acceptance for mudbloods and half-breeds.” The site claims that “the Heir and the Death Eaters of the Next Generation will achieve what Voldemort did not before the year is out.”
Balthazar Hobbs, Commander-in-Chief of the Auror Department, announced that the London crime scene has been located by now. Evidence is currently being secured and all leads will be pursued, said Mr. Hobbs at an ad hoc press conference at the Ministry tonight.
The Minister of Magic has declared a national state of emergency.
Oliver Wood leaves a wife and two children. –


I’m startled like from the stupor of a nightmare when someone taps me on the shoulder.
“Hey, mate.”
It’s Ron, looking so pale his freckles stand out like a skin disease. Sitting down opposite me, he embarks on a long-winded explanation about how he had to Apparate home after work to help his father fortify the defences of the Burrow. Arthur Weasley put up every known home defence spell after the Death Eaters’ invasion of Bill’s Wedding, and made the Burrow a magical fortress when Ginny joined the National Quidditch Team in Feburary.
“I’m to tell you, you can come to the Burrow anytime, Harry. Not just for Christmas. Anytime. Mom and Dad said it. You can bring Draco, too.” He pauses. “Anyway I told them you wouldn’t go anywhere without him.”
I nod, but I’ve got trouble following what he’s saying. The Death Eaters back. Oliver Wood dead. Killed while I was on my weekly commute trip cursing the weather, not more than two hours back.
Oliver Wood, the national icon, the young father who used to smile from all the tabloids. The boy who taught me Quidditch.
“It’s so sick,” Ron says. “Ginny is crushed, of course. Jones is Gwenog’s brother, she used to know him. And now Wood. Of course Mom and Dad are out of their minds with worry because of Ginny. Those fan stalkers appear like a real picnic now. Merlin, can you believe it? Death Eaters around again, killing actual people! Mom ordered everyone home. You included, you got that, didn’t you? Apart form Ginny, you’re the most prominent of us.”
It’s good to know I’m still “us” to the Weasleys. I thought I had forever forfeited that position when I stopped being the son-in-law in waiting. But apparently, I didn’t.
“There’s Percy,” I say, groping for some normal thing to say to all this. “He’s pretty prominent, as a Ministry official…”
“He’s just an errand boy for the Minister, same as back in the days of Fudge and Scrimgeour and Thicknesse. He’ll never be more than that, however much he talks of his privileges and how he’s going to make us all gape and marvel at him one day.”
“He says that?” I say. It’s absurdly pathetic, even for Percy. Ron nods solemnly.
“He totally does,” he says. “It’s proof that not everything is in the genes. There must be a free will after all; my brother is a living example of the fact that you can freely decide to be a pompous ass, even if all the rest of your family is really cool.”
“You did sound a bit self-satisfied yourself there just now.”
“You know what I mean.”
God, Ron truly is the best person to have around when the world implodes. Things do affect him, I know that, but he can be counted on continuing to be Ron, and to talk like Ron, too.
A strong odour, like cauliflower leftovers, invades my nostrils. Madam Rosmerta steps up to our table, wiping her filthy hands in her even filthier skirts.
“What can I get you, honey,” she chirps, aiming a flirty smile at Ron. He jumps in his seat. Then he recognizes her, and his shock visibly deepens. He’s just blue eyes, an open mouth, and freckles. Rosmerta was quite attractive back in the day, even I got those earthy, full-blooded-woman vibes, and Ron had a boy crush on her that he shared with half the boys at Hogwarts. With the male staff, probably, too.
“I’m good,” he blurts out at last and makes as if to pick up my mug and share my beer.
“You sit down, you order something,” Rosmerta declares, as if there were dozens of people waiting outside hoping to be let in and snatch a free seat. Ron orders a butterbeer and she retreats, along with her foul stink.
“What do you make of that potion story,” I ask.
“Hermione says it’s bullshit. She says they are bluffing. You can’t absorb people’s talents with a drink, no matter how clever that team of potioneers might be. Because it’s not all in the genes. Hermione always says that. She says that with sports, it’s mostly training.”
“A strong arm, maybe. But the aim? There is a genetic factor there, surely, else anyone could be a Quidditch star. Hell, they managed the Jones Pitch, and six of them. It does prove their potion technology is effective, doesn’t it. And ultimately they mean to tap people for their magic. Magic sure is in the genes. Ron, I fear it’s what’s going to happen. They are going to kill more people, steal their blood, distil their special powers. Then steal those, too.”
Ron slowly nods.
“If they really get there, if they get to absorb all kinds of different magical powers, they’d become these super heroes,” he says pensively. “Like people do in the Muggle movies.”
“Which would certainly help with those plans for achieving world domination.”
I look at the Daily Prophet again. I’ve put it on the table, as far away from us both as possible, like it was object of the Dark Arts.
These people are professionals who set out to use modern media to frighten and manipulate and ultimately control people. This Heir bloke’s smooth cyber propaganda makes Voldemort’s speeches to his followers sound like the rants of a troubled family father with a bit of a temper.
And Voldemort ultimately failed, he neither got to rule the world nor did he conquer death.
The Heir will achieve what Voldemort did not before the year is out…
“So they’re going after VIPs,” Ron says. “But I guess nobody’s safe. Only reactionaries who don’t have any talents, apparently.”
“And who don’t have a wizard for a dad.”
“Yeah, that’s the one good thing about it. Hermione’s Muggle-born. Everyone knows that. So she isn’t a target. Else she would be, with her stellar career and her skills.” He manages to look incredibly smug about his fiancée in spite of the horrific topic. “Same with Draco, isn’t it,” he continues. “He’s known for his talent for potions, but without a father in the picture, he should be fine. Good for you you fell for a bloke with just a mom.”
I humph and take a sip of my unspeakable butterbeer so I don’t have to comment.
When we part in the street, Ron repeats his parents’ invitation for Christmas. I tell him I’ll talk to Draco. It’s such an everyday bit of farewell dialogue. It’s still windy and damp, nothing’s changed in Hogsmeade’s unpleasant night-time main street. And yet all the world’s come off the hinges.


Chapter 3: A bloke with just a mom


A bloke with just a mom. It’s still weird for me when Ron or Hermione say this kind of thing about Draco.
They have known him for more than ten years, and they’ve known he’s Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy, for almost as long. But since Draco Cut the Cord with his father, they seem to have forgotten that, just like everyone else.
At first I tried to tell them. I assumed if I just gave them the facts, they’d know again who Draco is. But things don’t work like that with Cutting the Cord.
Ron and Hermione just don’t understand what I’m talking about when I tell them that Lucius Malfoy is Draco’s father. They still know Draco is a Black and his mother’s son, they know his last name and all of his history at Hogwarts, but his connection to Lucius Malfoy of Malfoy Manor is erased from their minds. For them, Draco simply doesn’t have a father and never had one. And funnily enough, they don’t seem to have a problem with the lack of logic in this, or with aligning facts that don’t add up. Not even Hermione.
Yeah, it’s impossible to tell anyone that Draco has got a father. People just won’t absorb the fact. So I’ve come to let the matter rest and just let my friends, like everyone else, see Draco as this guy whose mother had him without any guy involved.
It took me a surprisingly long time to finally ask myself why I myself still know about Draco and his father; why that spell didn’t affect me. When I asked Draco about it, he said as far as he knew, a husband or wife was exempt from the spell’s effects, and with us being fiancés, the same would hold true for me.
Of course I asked Hermione for her opinion, too, in the form of a general question. Ever ready to oblige, and one step ahead as usual, she informed me that the spell works on the cut-off parent and society as a whole, but has no effect on those who know the caster on an intimate level, like their closest family, or lovers.
“It’s interesting to note that it seems that any relationship, however short-lived, past or present, with a sexually charged character, will render the spell partially inactive with regard to the specific partner,” she said. “It doesn’t correspond with modern sexual standards, obviously. People hardly feel they’re intimately connected to their one-night-stands, do they, and yet, as far as Cutting the Cord is concerned, they are, and for life. It’s a very old spell, you see.”
“You mean everyone who ever had sex with the spell-caster will still know who he is? Even if it was just one time?”
“They will know who he or she is,” Hermione corrected, and I changed the subject.
Suddenly I think of the time Draco lived in the streets and worked as a rent boy. All he ever did was blowjobs, but I assume that counts as a sexually charged activity. I thought all of that was in the past, but now it’s important that I know if those tricks might be aware of Draco’s identity. If one of them works for the Heir, he might suggest Draco as an eligible target. Yeah, I’ve got to know if there’s a risk for Draco after all. I’ve got to find out if a blowjob has the power to disable the effects of Cutting the Cord.
It’s a strange question to ask, but thankfully Hermione doesn’t think like that. All she cares for is facts and insights, and she’s ready to look into anything, as long as it’s before midnight. –

“A blowjob is sex, Harry,” she says sternly, like I was a president about to be indicted for sex with an intern and trying to claim he hadn’t really done anything, technically.
I’ve called her on Video Phono as soon as I was back in my apartment. Somehow the video spell doesn’t seem to work, but I can hear her just fine.
“Harry?”
“Yeah, I know, only… So… Are you saying that someone who worked say as a prostitute, and ever only performed oral sex, could Cut the Cord with their father, and all of his past tricks would still know who he is?”
There’s a squeaking sound, like when someone wearing a leather outfit sits down in a desk chair. I must be wrong about the leather. Hermione wears frilly nightgowns.
“Who are we talking about here, Harry.”
“Draco, maybe. That’s why I’ve got to know. I’m worried that Heir guy might know Draco has got a wizard father. He might try to get his hands on him.”
“You aren’t making any sense here, Harry,” Hermione says, sounding slightly, uncharacteristically confused. She clears her throat. “But about the aspect of prostitution. I read up on Cutting the Cord after we first talked about it, and it turns out while the spell doesn’t discriminate between blowjobs, vaginal or anal sex, or even simple petting it seems, it draws the line at paid sex. Any paid activity isn’t rated as an intimate relationship, because it’s defined by the context of business, not by the outside appearance of intimacy which is merely technical in prostitution. Does that answer your question?”
“I guess.”
“Yes or no, Harry.”
“Yes, I guess.”
That squeaking again. She got up from that chair. It didn’t sound so much like leather as latex. It occurs to me that maybe someone tipped her off that frilly is not exactly fuel for bedroom action.
I guess I’m alright with just having had her on Phono tonight after all. –


The next day, I meet Sybil Trelawney in one of the old hallways on the ground floor when I’m on my way back to my rooms after dinner.
The dusty twilight of torches and the waxing moon. Her hair and torn shawls wafting about her in the still ever-present Hogwarts draught like spider webs.
I know she gave McGonagall a list of death candidates. Forty names, forty people who’ll die at the hands of the terrorists before the year is out. I know I’m on it.
Trelawney is a total nutcase. I don’t know why I stop and ask that question. Only that it’s been on my mind, and still is, Death Eaters and Heirs and the prospect of my own imminent death aside.
He’s not on her list, he won’t get killed by terrorists, but he’s still pregnant and part-fairy and without counsel or competent help.
“Draco Malfoy. What’s going to happen with him?”
“Are you requiring a session with me? I am a Seer. I was personal advisor to Albus Dumbledore. I’m not doing this kind of thing in the hallway.”
I shrug.
“Just asking.”
I am desperate, I bent so low as to ask Sybil Trelawney a question about the future. But I won’t go join her in her recess for a one-on-one.
I wait for her to tell me again about how she’s too sought after for doing her Seeing without a special appointment, when she stiffens and her eyes behind the giant glasses take on a far-away expression. I lift my palms in a sudden surge of panic, I open my mouth to tell her I’m good and to please save it, but she’s quicker. She utters a spine-chilling soft wail, then starts to declaim in a husky stage whisper.
“You will fail to see. You will go wrong. He will suffer, not at your hands, but through your doing.”
The rest is echoing silence.
I wait for a couple more seconds, but it seems she’s done.
Okay. Okay.
That wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t exactly uplifting, but roughly what I could have expected.
Trelawney is still staring past me. I feel like a prize-fool, standing here with this bedraggled alky.
“Thanks, I guess,” I say, starting to move past her. From the corner of my eye, I catch something like a blink from behind her glasses, like she’s throwing me an affronted glance, so I add, “Professor.”
I’m already at the stairs when there’s her carrying whisper again.
“You are headed into the shadows, Harry Potter.”
I can’t see if she’s still wearing that creepy Seer look. I can’t make out her eyes from the distance. There’s just her glasses reflecting the moonlight, lending its molten silver a malicious gleam.