Up the Duff

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Severus Snape gently patted the cheek of his fallen lover as her deceased husband watched worriedly.

It only took a few moments before Narcissa Malfoy moaned softly and her eyelids started to flutter, but it seemed that both men in the room were holding their breath until it happened.

“Narcissa…” Severus whispered as he pulled her closer into his arms.

Narcissa woozily sat up. “Severus... I had the strangest dream.... I thought I saw Lucius’ ghost.”

Severus couldn’t help it, as soon as she said that his gaze automatically shifted to where Lucius Malfoy stood shining like a beacon in the dark room.

Narcissa’s gaze naturally followed Severus’.

Her ear splitting scream very nearly shattered every beaker and vial in the potions classroom.




Poppy Pomfrey fussed and fretted as she bustled around the private rooms of Harry Potter-Malfoy and Draco Malfoy-Potter.

“I cant believe....” She muttered under her breath while giving Harry a look that would have had the Dark Lord on his knees and begging for forgiveness in seconds.

Harry crossed his arms defensively over his chest. “Well.. How were we supposed to know that Draco would morph into a female, when it got close to time to deliver?”

Poppy gave him another look that nearly scorched his eyebrows right off his face.

“How?” The matron sputtered. “I gave you both a book on male pregnancy during Draco’s first month! Didn’t either of you bother to read it?!”

Draco blushed red while Harry stared guiltily at the floor. “Ummmmm yeah...” The “boy who lived to be mortified” mumbled. “We started to read it.”

“Started to?” Poppy made sure they both shared in the dirty look she was giving them.

Draco shifted uncomfortably on the bed. Both of them were equally to blame here. In cases like this it was usually best just to tell the truth, and take the tongue lashing that would inevitably follow.

“It was all Harry’s fault.” Draco said earnestly.

Harry Potter-Malfoy felt his jaw drop as he found himself summarily thrown to the sharks without so much as a midget life preserver as protection. Poppy rounded on him like a mother hen frenziedly protecting her baby chicks.

“Mr. Potter-Malfoy!” Poppy scowled at the cringing vampire. “I expect better from you than that! Your husband and these babies should come first before your own desires!”

“I told him not to look at the conception illustrations at the front of the book Madame.” Draco said innocently. “He wouldn’t listen, and the next thing I knew the book went flying.”

“Harry Potter-Malfoy!” Poppy was about to get cranked up but good.

“Draco looked at them too!” Harry was more than willing to share the blame.

“He made me.” Draco said piteously.

“I-I- WHAT?!”

“Its hard to read upside down, and sideways Madame Pomfrey.” Draco nodded. “I wanted to read up on the facts of male pregnancy, but Harry was a lecherous beast!”

Poppy Pomfrey gave him a look so ugly that Harry reflexively covered his genitals with both his hands, and started slowly backing out of the room. Unfortunately for him, his exit came to a speedy halt, when he ran straight into a sullen and cranky from lack of sleep, Severus Snape and a still slightly dazed, Narcissa Malfoy.

“What have you done now Potter?” Severus snapped.



Tom Riddle wandered the halls of Hogwarts with his mind awhirl with all the things that had happened since he and Lucius Malfoy had been snatched out of the cemetery in Godric’s Hollow and deposited in the middle of the school.

It seemed like ages since they had come here, and they had yet to find out who brought them and exactly why they had come.

Tom shook his head in dismay. Redemption. Of all the things he might of suspected they would have to accomplish, that seemed the most impossible of them all.

It wasn’t that Tom didn’t believe redemption was possible. He knew it was. Just not where he was concerned.

Lucius Malfoy had been a Death Eater and a bastard, but even for him redemption was probably possible. On the other hand, Tom Riddle hadn’t just been responsible for his own crimes, which were numerous and thoroughly heinous enough; he had also been responsible for the sins of hundreds of others under his command.

If anyone was ever beyond redemption it should have been him. And yet.... Here he was.

Tom walked on, not even watching where he was going until suddenly, he found himself standing in front of a disturbingly familiar door. Hesitantly, he pushed through the entrance to the second floor girls restroom and stepped inside.

Dear God. It was exactly the same as he remembered it from that fateful day so long ago. The day that everything had eternally changed. His last day as a student of Hogwarts. The last day his soul had ever been whole.

Tom stepped up in front of the row of sinks that covered the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Tentatively, he reached out and let his fingertips trace the serpent symbol that marked the porcelain.

“Hello.”

Tom jumped as a voice sounded behind him. He hadn’t heard anyone come in. Whirling around, he found himself face to face with none other than Moaning Myrtle herself.

“H-Hello.” Tom sputtered.

“You’re new around here.” Myrtle said as she floated past Tom, looking him over.

“You can see me?” Tom said, then kicked himself. Of course, she could see him or she wouldn’t be speaking to him.

Myrtle nodded. “All the ghost in the castle can see you, and the other one you brought with you. None of them will speak to either of you though.”

“Why?” Tom said as he watched her circle him.

“Well....” Myrtle frowned. “I know why they wont speak to the blond one. Everybody knows Lucius Malfoy is a bloody prat.” She stopped in front of Tom. “I’m not sure why they haven’t spoken to you though, they wont even talk about you when I’ve asked.”

“Yeah?” Tom had a fairly good idea of why that might be. “Why are you speaking to me then?”

Myrtle looked thoughtful. “You remind me of someone, and I cant place exactly who.... so I thought if I spoke to you I might be able to remember.”

“And do you? Remember I mean?” Tom held his breath.

“No.” Myrtle shook her head. “Not yet.” She cocked her head to the side. “You do remind me a little of Harry Potter... your hair and eyes.... but that’s not it.”

Tom sighed with relief. “Maybe its just your imagination.”

“No.” Myrtle pursed her lips. “I don’t have any.”

Guilt welled up strongly inside Tom every time he looked at Myrtle’s ghost, so he was doing his very best to avoid just that thing.

His eyes swept over the room, and finally landed on the small serpent engraved above the sink. He could focus on that.

“Why are you in the girls lavatory anyway?” Myrtle obnoxiously floated into his line of sight.

Tom looked up at the ceiling. “Well... I-I was just wandering around, and I ended up here.”

“You’re not a girl though.” Myrtle giggled as she floated up, once again intruding herself into his field of vision.

Tom immediately lowered his gaze to the sink and the snake once again. The snake. Just focus on the snake!

“Don’t be sssso ssssilly.” Tom hissed, then slapped his hand over his mouth as he realized what he had just done. Focusing on the snake may not have been the brightest idea he had ever had.

Myrtle’s eyes went wide as saucers as the parsletongue slipped from his lips. “You!” She pointed one bony finger at him accusingly. “I know who you are!”

Tom held his hands up defensively in front of him. “I can explain!”

“Explain?!” Myrtle wasn’t having any of it. “You killed me you gormleess git!” She kicked him hard, right in the shin.

Tom grabbed his ankle, and began trying to hop away from the infuriated spirit. “Just give me a chance to tell you what happened!” He begged.

Myrtle swooped up behind him. “Oh yeah?!! Explain this!” She reached out, and then grasped a nipple while Tom was busy trying to protect his lower half. “Purple Nurple!” The homely ghost shrilly screeched, and twisted the tiny nub so hard that Tom Riddle saw stars explode behind his transparent eyelids.

“Holy fuck!” Tom yelped as he dropped to his knees.

Myrtle slowly descended until she was standing directly in front of the kneeling man. “Oh Tom...” She said, much too sweetly.

Riddle was still stunned by the immense pain in both his ankle and his chest or he would have been thinking more clearly. He looked up.

Myrtle kicked him square in the balls.

Tom collapsed onto his side with a strangled scream. Myrtle floated over, and perched herself on the edge of one of the sinks and watched him writhe in agony.

Eventually he got his breath back, and even though it felt like he had just been mauled by a werewolf riding a hippogriff; Tom somehow managed to struggle back to his knees.

“Okay.” Myrtle leaned forward as she peered down at him.

“Okay what?” Tom rasped.

“You said you could explain.” Myrtle wrinkled up her nose. “I doubt it, but go ahead. Try to explain why you murdered me.”

Tom closed his eyes for a moment. How could he explain?

Reaching up and grasping the edge of the sink Tom pulled himself back to his feet. “Myrtle....” Tom sighed. “I cant give you back what I took from you.”

Myrtle snorted.

“All I can do is try to explain....” Tom lowered his head. “And apologize.”

“Go on.” Myrtle said, looking at him with real interest now.

“First of all, I had no idea that anyone was in this bathroom.” Tom grimaced. “No one ever came in here. I swear to you I thought it was empty!”

Myrtle nodded slowly. She could see why he might have thought that. No one ever did use this bathroom. She herself had chosen it for that very reason. None of the Hogwarts bullies would think to look for her in the deserted lavatory.

“Second.... I had no intention of releasing the basilisk into Hogwarts!” Tom stared down at his hands. “Once I discovered I was the heir of Slytherin and I could open the chamber I just....” He truly looked miserable. “I just felt like somebody for the first time in my life.”

Myrtle bit her bottom lip. She knew very well what it felt like to feel like a nobody.

“When I opened the chamber and realized that it was all true...” Tom continued, “I called the basilisk to see if it would come.” He shook his head at the memory. “I had no idea how big it was.. or how strong it would be.”

Tom shuddered. “I-I lost control of it almost immediately and it slipped through into the lavatory.”

Myrtle could easily imagine the shock of a young Tom Riddle; when finally faced with the monster he had so foolishly summoned, and his terror as the thing got away from him and out of the chamber.

“I followed it of course.” Tom murmured. “But by the time I got it under control, and back into the chamber... it was too late.”

Myrtle scooted a little closer. “I found you lying on the floor with your eyes wide open and staring. You had the most horrified look on your face.” Tom sobbed brokenly. “It was too late... too late for you... too late for me... the deed had been done and there was no way to fix what had happened. You were dead and my soul was ripped in half.”

Myrtle reached out and gently took his hand. “Everyone remembers that I was the one that opened the Chamber of Secrets and released the beast.” Tom sighed heavily. “For some reason, it always escapes their attention that I was also the one that recaptured it and locked the Chamber again.”

Tom suddenly found himself in the awkward position of having his hand petted by the girl he had killed. “Myrtle...” He whispered. “If you never believe another thing I say please believe this. I was never sorrier for anything in my entire life than I was for what I did to you. I am so sorry.”

They sat there for a few moments in silence, just holding hands. “All this time...” Myrtle whispered sadly. “all this time I thought you had murdered me in cold blood, and it was an accident.”

“Its not like it makes any difference.” Tom shrugged, “Either way you’re still dead, and I’m still responsible.”

“No Tom.” Myrtle looked him in the eye. “Don’t you see? It makes all the difference in the world.”

Tom looked confused. “But why? It changes nothing.”

“Because…” Myrtle smiled, and Tom thought she really should more often because in truth it was a lovely smile. “If it was an accident..... then I can finally forgive you.”

He didn’t know why, but for some reason; Tom Riddle suddenly felt lighter than he had in a long, long time. It was as though a giant weight he hadn’t even known he was carrying had just been lifted from his shoulders.

Suddenly, redemption didn’t feel like quite such an impossibility after all.


TBC....