Seven Preposterous Things

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
--Helen Keller


In the dim car, streetlights and restaurants whizzing past, Severus reached out and laid his hand on Hermione's thigh. Draco watched him by the dashboard light.

It was not a long way to Denton. An hour, perhaps. So about as far as it was to Maison Malfoy from London by broom, but it was longer than he was accustomed to spending in an automobile. Longer than he was accustomed to spending with anyone younger than the average firstie. After a period of silence, Draco finally spoke.

"You're really going to have a baby, Millie?" he asked.

"Shhhhhhhhhh, he's almost asleep," Millie said, in a way that was annoyed without actually being angry. "I've already got a baby, right here," she whispered, "but I am going to have another in a few months."

"How many? How long? I mean, how many months, Mill?" Draco asked, still wrapping his brain around the idea.

"Six months, I reckon, and this little fella'll have a sister," she said, brushing the top of the baby's bald, but pointy, head with her hand.

"How did it happen?" Draco asked in bewilderment; they hadn't fucked any more or less or in a position that was any different then they ever had.

"It's sad that you need to ask," Millie said, humour clear, though she was still whispering and frowning.

"No, I..." Draco wasn't in the mood for teasing, particularly if he was the butt.

"Allow me to clear this up for you, Draco. As your head of house, I would have seen to your education years ago had I known your father was so remiss. When a wizard is particularly fond of a witch, sometimes he feels the need to express that fondness in a physical way..." Severus paused in dramatic mockery.

"So he buys a goat." Granger jumped in and joined the fun.

"Very funny," Draco said, not laughing; though he was the only one. He expected a certain amount of this sort of thing from Severus and Millie, but Granger usually stayed out of the Slytherin sport of ridicule. She abstained when Severus was the butt as well, but Draco didn't expect that was changing any time in the near future.

"I'm sorry, Draco," Granger said, still chuckling.

"My granny put a contraceptus in when she plaited my pubes; you mucked it up when you unravelled it," Millie said with a shrug.

"Did you have to say that in front of me? Are the two of you compelled to make me privy to every detail of your couplings?" Severus roared.

The baby started to cry almost instantly, and Millie poked Severus in the back of his head.

"What did you do that for?" she growled.

"If you would refrain from..." he growled back at her.

"I was telling the truth; it's no call to wake the baby," Millie snapped, interrupting him.

Everyone was quiet for a bit; everyone, that was, except for the baby, but Millie got him back to sleep in a few minutes.

Draco watched mesmerised as Millie fluttered her fingers lightly over the baby's closed eyelids and he began to snore softly. She ought to do that for him sometime, but then he never had any difficulty sleeping.

The baby was still ugly when he slept, but without the screaming he was easier to like, or think about liking at least.

"Do you think once Severus makes him his elixir he'll be quieter?" Draco asked, fingering the edge of the strange Muggle paper-and-plastic nappy he'd managed to locate at the store near the house.

"He won't be in pain; his withdrawal will be over," Severus said, keeping his voice low. "The drug's damage should be reversed as well, if administered in the next few days. More than that, I cannot promise."

"How many is a few?" Millie asked.

"Three, at most; should one prefer to err on the side of caution, I advise the elixir be administered within 48 hours. Unfortunately, I do have work to attend to," Severus said, and Draco watched as a silent sigh pulled at Snape's shoulders.

"You'll call in to work," Granger said, and Draco was relieved she made the suggestion instead of either he or Mille.

"I will not," Severus said. "I cannot. Not unless one of my co-workers can be coerced into taking my shifts. Still, I will need to begin brewing tonight to meet the deadline."

"Then ask them," Granger said, and Draco watched Millie's shoulder's hunch in a way that made him nervous.

"This may come as a shock, but I am not universally beloved among my fellow workers. We are currently short staffed, and I doubt any of them would choose to forego their days off on my account," Severus said, as if the entire thing was hopeless.

"Fascinate one," Granger said simply.

"Is this Hermione ‘stop using magic to take advantage of Muggles' Granger I hear?" he said, his lip curled.

"I believe that's Hermione Snape, thank you," she said, and Draco wondered exactly what brought that on.

"A child's health is rather more pressing than you not wanting to cough up two dollars for a packet of cigarettes," Granger went on.

"That's a splendid idea. Whoever I chose would be even more bloody unbearable to work with upon my return," Snape said, his tone softening. If she'd spent as many years with him as her head of house as Draco had, she'd know she had already won.

"Ask nicely first, if that doesn't get you anywhere, use magic. Which of the other bartenders dislikes you least?" Granger said, suddenly prim.

"Shakeleg, most likely; Albert Shakeleg," Severus said petulantly.

"Then we'll call Mr. Shakeleg as soon as we're home," Granger said.

"Is he a Muggle? That sounds like one of us to me," Draco said.

"Hardly, " Snape snorted. "Albert is a Red Indian. I understand the name was originally Shake-Testicle, but it was altered by government agents."

"What for?" Millie asked suddenly piping up.

"Muggles used to be rather more... anxious about sexual matters than magic folk," Hermione said.

"Muggles certainly are queer, aren't they?" Millie said, tracing the baby's lips with a fingertip. Draco had never seen her so distracted.

"I'm not adding my own blood to the elixir. I refuse to forge yet another blood tie against my will. So one of you will have to do it. I am not," Severus hissed out, as though that little speech had been building up steam since he first saw the baby.

Of course, it would require that sort of a potion to repair the sort of damage that a drug would do to a developing baby.

Draco wasn't stupid, far from it; he was not, however, generally one for long soul searching thoughts. He wasn't accustomed to them, for one thing, having never found extended thought necessary before the age of seventeen. Staring at the horrible ugly baby, he had a thought come unbidden like a bellyache.

Draco had been bored for most of his life. Oh, there had been amusements: food, and games and diversions of all sort, but still, except for rare moments of Quidditch and the unfortunate Dumbledore business, he'd been bored to tears and hadn't even known it.

At the time, he only knew he was irritated and vaguely listless, and he'd thought it was simply part of his personality.

The truth was, pleasing Millie had been the first thing he'd actually applied himself to in his life.

Everything he'd ever laid his hand to before Millie had been carefully controlled and set up by one or both of his parents so that there was no chance of failure.

He was sure they hadn't meant it that way, but it cast an inconsequential light on all his endeavours. Winning hardly counts as winning, once losing has been taken off the table. As a Malfoy, it was almost as if the name guaranteed the results.

While learning Millie was hard, and it made his blood sing in his veins with excitement to please her, being in her Gran's wood was easy. Everything he might want or need was provided, and there were older witches and wizards looking out for him.

To be perfectly honest, living in Texas under the name of Nigel Black was the best thing that had ever happened to young Draco.

The closest thing he had to a parent in Texas was Snape, and Snape was no parent. His style could best be summed up by his old method of monitoring the corridors at Hogwarts.

The rule was no running in the corridors. Other teachers would shout, deduct house points, and try different charms to keep the students from tearing down the halls.

Snape, on the other hand, would rig invisible lines at changing intervals to trip the unwary.

No one ran in the dungeons.

In Texas, Draco started out with a house that was essentially a pile of rubbish. He'd cleaned and painted and sorted, stripped and scrubbed; he threw out fifty-year-old periodicals and rubbed wax into mahogany.

He planted roses, mainly because Maison de Malfoy had rose gardens where he and his mother and father used to dine al fresco when he was small.

It had done something to him to watch the bare spiky stumps from the garden shop grow and twist and bloom for no other reason than him. He had felt the green life, quick and sharp, and he had called to it, drawn it out with something that was subtler than a spell and simpler than water. Like called to like. It had done something to him as well to breathe in the heavy air that in his back garden, thick as it was with rich verdant life, even smelled green. Just as it had done something to him to break Millie's disapproving glare into a grin.

Away from the complicated web of pureblood family, rankings, and ties, both blood and magical, there seemed so much more room to breathe instead of weighing every move looking for the mutual obligation. He doubted he was alone in the feeling. Still, it would be nice to have a bigger circle. A wizard needed some other magical folk about, or they wound up forgetting what was real and what wasn't. As far as he knew, sooner or later a wizard went utterly mad alone.

Had it only been the two of them, only he and Millie, they would have been too small an island and never would have remained as they were now, surrounded by Muggles but not mixing more than necessary; among Muggles, but by no means with them.

He found himself staring deep into the face of the awful baby. He felt, without trying, the life and magic rising like sap in the baby. That was one thing about living away from magic and unnecessary spells, it made you more aware of magic when you saw it.

He would be the father. Draco repeated the idea to himself; he would be the father. Millie would be the mother.

It would be like the roses. He would grow his children into something fine. He found the baby had opened his eyes and was staring but not crying. His eyes were huge and round. A tiny thin blue hand, not unlike a little translucent spider, grasped at his finger not quite able to grip onto him.

Draco suddenly recalled how weak and lost he'd felt when his father was taken away to prison.

I'll be your father, little wizard, he thought, looking at the little face. You don't have to be a Mudblood any longer.

"I'll do it, Severus, untwist your knickers," Draco said, right before Millie grasped him by the back of his head and kissed him like she'd never kissed him before. Draco felt as though a tiny sun was exploding somewhere behind his eyes.


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Purchasing the goat was a straightforward affair and afforded Draco and Millie the opportunity to get a look inside a mobile home.

The consensus was, the inside was quite like the outside: a plastic and aluminium box.


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"Arrrgggggggg," Severus growled through gritted teeth.

"Shhhhhhhhh," Millie hushed him.

"What is it now?" Draco asked plaintively.

"I missed the fucking turn off, that's sodding ‘what now'; the bleeding wretch in the white Suburban wouldn't deign to let me in," he said between clenched teeth.

Hermione was trying not to mind the smell and pondering the peculiarity of riding home with a goat in her lap out of friendship for Millie when something bizarre streaked across the road in front of them. It looked like a cross between a rat and a dinosaur.

"Fucking shit!" Severus bellowed as the car swerved.

Hermione may or may not have had a similar response not only to the sudden sideways motion of the car but also the not inconsiderable issue of a cloven hoof suddenly pressed sharply into her sternum. The goat was caught somehow between climbing up her and clinging to her. It also seemed to be attached to her head somehow.

"What was that?" Draco said.

"Shit! This goat is eating my hair," Hermione wailed. One was, she was quite certain, allowed to wail when a goat was eating one's hair.

"Well, make it stop," Severus yelled, turning sharply onto a narrow gravel access road. "That, I believe, was an armadillo, a live armadillo, which is extremely fortuitous considering we have need of just such an animal for your son's elixir."

The car made a lurch into an open field, and the doors flew open, dislodging the goat from the side of Hermione's head. Not one to be left behind, Hermione made quick work of tying the rope about the animal's neck to the steering wheel and tearing off behind the others.

She had no idea Millie could move so fast. She must have taken the baby out of his carrier while Hermione was tying up the goat, because she was holding him close to her chest with both arms as she helped Severus and Draco corral the armadillo like some mad wizarding version of Rugby.

Unfortunately, each time either Severus or Draco attempted to make a grab for the thing it escaped, necessitating another mad dash.

Hermione, being herself, had an idea.

"Severus, toss me your shirt," she called, slowly closing on in the most unguarded side of the triangle.

Severus looked incredulous, but he complied.

Taking his black t-shirt in her hands, she ripped the neck open that she might tie it back together more securely.

"What are you doing?" he shouted.

"Making a sack," she answered, "now drive it toward me."

Draco and Severus moved fast and the animal charged her, as expected, diving headfirst into her improvised trap. What was not expected was the strength of the thing; it was only through sheer tenacity that Hermione managed to keep her hold on the creature in the bag.

"How in the Hell are we going to bring this thing home?" Hermione said. Millie answered her with a look as puzzled as her own, so she looked hard at Severus and Draco. "And don't either of you dare suggest I hold it between my knees."

"This vehicle does come equipped with a boot," Severus said.

"The key to which we do not have," she reminded him.

"We are, however, miles from our home, in an open field, in a city with a sizeable magical population," Severus said, archly. "The local Aurors are no more able to identify the performer of a given spell than those in England."

Now Hermione knew from her reading that wandless magic was possible, but she'd never known anyone who could do it with controlled and reliable results. She made no pretence at not being impressed when the next words from Severus' lips were a lazy... "Alohamora."

With a sharp pop, the boot flew open accompanied by the most horrid stench she'd ever smelled in her life outside a potions class. The armadillo went still.

"Gah." Mille, who pregnant or not, had never been unwell a day in her life to Hermione's knowledge, turned a distinctly green colour.

There, in the boot of Severus' car, was a putrescent corpse. The smell everyone had supposed to be cat pee was, in fact, a variation on human death. And ammonia. There were two jugs of ammonia beside the semi-liquid corpse.

"Fuck me," Draco whispered.

Severus sighed; Hermione watched his face shift from surprise to disgust, which was practically his normal expression.

"The three of you get out of the way," Severus said with a wave of his hand.

"Four," corrected Millie, moving some ten meters to the east. "You forgot the baby."

"We're five if you count the armadillo," Hermione felt compelled to add, following Millie.

"Draco, get the goat," Severus said tightly. "Hermione, whatever you do, do not let go of the armadillo."

Hermione watched as he scanned the field for witnesses and accounted for each and every member of their little party. Then for a moment Severus stood taller and was in that second, shirtless under his leather jacket and hair at its greasy worst, transformed; the glorious epitome of every storybook wizard brimming with power.

He raised his arms dramatically and tiny sparks were evident from the tips of his fingers. Slowly, the body and its accompanying goo rose from the boot hovering mid-air; there was a brilliant yellow flash accompanied by an even worse, if such a thing were possible, burnt smell and a sprinkle of ash drifted across the field like grey snow flakes.

Hermione was sure she had never seen anything quite so splendid in her life as Severus Snape.

He strode to her, and she first thought he was going to embrace her, until he reached her side and relieved her of the armadillo, who struggled anew.

And just when she realised she'd never wanted to kiss Severus so much before.

"You do realise you've destroyed evidence of a murder?" she said, taking the goat's rope from Draco.

"Scourgify," he enunciated, pointing one long finger at the car as he held the squirming armadillo to his chest in a pose not unlike Millie's, "and now I've finished the job."

She knew he was right, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

Quick as a wink he shoved the armadillo into the boot and shut the lid.

"Impressive," Hermione said, but she regretted it as soon as she saw the self-satisfied smirk on his lips. She wondered exactly how much of his display had been necessary and how much had been entirely for her benefit. He was so sodding theatrical.

"So I hear," Severus said smugly. "Had you spent slightly less time with your books and more on magical practicums..."

"I didn't realise you knew any cleaning spells," Hermione said pleasantly.

And Severus scowled and brought the car back to the access road.

"How do you intend we open the boot once we're home?" Hermione asked.

"Coat hanger," Severus asked. "Are you saying you weren't the least bit awed by my performance?"

"I never said that," Hermione answered him. "Of course I was impressed, but no one likes a show off. How many times did you tell me that when I was at school?"

Severus was quiet.

"It was wonderful, you were wonderful," Hermione said, only slightly muffled by the goat on her lap.


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Once they were home, Millie cut Hermione's hair to match the place where it had been chewed by the goat. Relieved of length and weight, Hermione's once bushy tresses resembled nothing so much as a dandelion gone to seed.

Millie paused to curiously pull one tight corkscrewed ringlet; it ought to have made a sound the way it instantly bounced back into place.

Personally, Millie didn't use the telephone, but it fascinated her to watch other people do it. She could hear Severus in the hall, his voice echoing off everything, the way it did. Either he had gone mad and was talking to no one or he was using the telephone.

Draco held the sleeping baby.

Severus walked in and stood expectantly in the kitchen doorway.

"Do you hate it?" Hermione said, sounding strangely unsure of herself.

"It is hair," Severus said with a shrug. "I'm not overly concerned one way or the other. Had she hacked off a similar portion of your arse, I might have some objection."

Granger dusted a curl or two off her shoulder and snorted. "Thank you for your honesty."

"You're welcome," Severus said automatically. "I spoke to Albert Shakeleg."

"And?" Hermione said.

"I did not have to fascinate him," Severus said sourly.

"Lovely," Hermione said.

"However, he refused to cover my shifts unless I bring my charming wife to his home for dinner, Thursday after next," Severus said it as though it was some sort of prison sentence.

"That's wonderful, Severus; do you realise what it means? I think you've made a friend," Hermione said brightly.

"Wonderful," Severus repeated with a frown.

"No one ever invited me for dinner when I worked at the ministry," Hermione said.

"Their loss," Snape said, reaching his arm round Hermione's waist.

Despite the madness, Millie had the unreasonable feeling everything was going to be quite all right.

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Author's Note: Special Thanks to Shiv, Shining Warrior Queen of Betas