Chapters 201-210

Bright New World

Hermione held Hannah while she sobbed. But no one could hold Draco.

oooOooo

‘Shhh, Hannah, shhh, it’s all right. I’ve got you. It’s okay. Shhh…’

Hannah’s breath was hot against Hermione’s neck. Her robe was quite damp at her shoulder, and her back was beginning to cramp. Hermione hugged Hannah and fervently wished that there was anything she could do.

Nothing was all right. And it would never be okay. Her feeble words of comfort sounded hollow in her ears. Draco shouldn’t have died in the first place. And he shouldn’t have come back in the second place; doomed to dwell in the Ministry of Magic for all eternity.

All right, so Severus and Draco had discovered that Draco could already roam Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley freely. And questioning the members of the Headless Hunt and the ghosts at Hogwarts had yielded information which led them to assume that—as time passed—Draco would be able to venture further abroad. After five hundred or six hundred years, he’d probably be able to attend anniversary celebrations at Hogwarts and to holiday in Majorca.

But for the time being it looked like the Ministry of Magic had a new model employee: one who didn’t need sleep, luncheon breaks, holidays or pay. Though Hermione would see to it that he got all three: luncheon breaks, holidays and pay. Ghost or not, Draco should have some rights!

In the living room Hermione heard Severus talking to Draco at his most soothing; his silky voice an audible embrace for the distraught ghost.

‘No,’ Hannah wailed. ‘Nothing is all right. Draco? Draco? Do you hear me? Draco?!’

‘Yes, love?’ Draco’s voice sounded as translucent as his body, with nothing of his new figure’s silvery shimmer.

Hannah drew away from Hermione just a bit, wiping her running nose and wet eyes on the sleeve of her robe like a little girl. And like a small child, she did not let go of Hermione, but clung to her, even as she turned to face Draco, with new tears streaming down her face. As if Hermione was the last anchor in Hannah’s world, a world that had completely come adrift.

‘It’s a boy,’ Hannah choked out. ‘I know you were hoping for a girl, but I had the Charm performed only two days ago, and it’s a boy, and oh, Merlin, Draco, how can we get married if you’re a ghost?’

oooOooo

It was late at night (or rather very early in the morning) when Severus and Hermione left Hannah and Draco at last.

Severus had plied Hannah with the strongest calming draught that pregnant women could ingest without ill effects. Draco would stay with her—but not touch her. His touch felt like icy fog in his new incarnation, a sensation that upset his former fiancée very much. And so much agitation wouldn’t be good for the baby. Draco was under strict instructions to run—no, to float and summon the ghost of Daisy Dodderidge at the Leaky Cauldron around the corner if Hannah experienced any untoward symptoms.

Although not far from Diagon Alley, St. Mungo’s had proved to be out of reach for Draco.

Not so for Daisy. She had died in the middle of the 16th century and returned to haunt her daughter—whose proficiency at the preparation of the Leaky Couldron’s famous split pea soup the late Daisy Dodderidge apparently hadn’t put much faith in. By January 2001 there were few places on earth that Daisy’s ghost couldn’t reach if she put her mind to it.

With these arrangements in place, Severus and Hermione felt…not exactly reassured, but at the very least resigned to grant Hannah and Draco the privacy both of them desired.

‘I still wish they’d have allowed Harry or you or me to stay for the night…’ Hermione muttered. ‘I didn’t like Hannah’s colour at all when we left, and I’m not a healer!’

Severus sighed. ‘Exactly. You’re not a healer. And they do need time to come to terms with…’

‘How do you come to terms with something like that?’ Hermione asked, when they stopped around the corner from Hannah’s apartment, getting ready to Apparate back to Hogwarts. ‘Has something like that ever happened before?’

‘Something like what?’ Severus bit out. ‘That someone who was killed by a fish tank and/or a fish came back as a ghost? I don’t know. But weirder deaths in history have yielded ghosts; just look at Nearly Headless Nick back home at Hogwarts.’

Hermione sighed and simply put her arms around Severus, drawing him close to her.

If anything, the news that Draco had returned as a ghost had been harder on Severus than to hear that Draco had died in the first place. Hermione hugged her husband as tightly as she could.

Diagon Alley was cold and dark and damp on this January night. Severus’ robes smelled more of wet wool than of his arousing, personal scent. But she felt how he shuddered beneath the layers of fabric that shielded him from the world. And she was shivering, too, although it was far warmer in London than in Scotland.

‘At least he’ll get to see his son,’ she whispered.

‘And how his fiancée eventually marries another,’ Severus retorted. ‘How the woman he loved and desired finds love and release in another man’s arms.’

He inhaled sharply. ‘Sometimes I loathe the wizarding world,’ Severus admitted bitterly.

Hermione thought of her parents and their new daughter. Of all the friends she had lost and the ones she might lose yet.

Oh yes, the Muggle world was dangerous, too: there were car accidents and crime. You could be robbed, raped and killed in any dark alley in London.

But still—sometimes it seemed the safer, softer, brighter world of the two.

A world that knew nothing of ghosts, Inferi and Dementors. A world, in which evil witches were the stuff of fairy tales and baked in ovens until they couldn’t harm anyone anymore.