The Expectant Detectives

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Chapter Seventeen


None of them spoke as the one thing kept going through their heads over and over again. Lucius Malfoy not only had a half brother, but he wasn’t a pure blood. If that weren’t enough it looked like his half brother was sending him all those dead bodies, but for what reason none of them had a clue. They had charged out of the gallery, straight into Lucius’s private study, where the blond went over to the fire whiskey.


It wasn’t until he had his second shot of fire whiskey that Lucius spun on Hermione. But is fury filled roar died on his lips the moment he saw that Hermione was sobbing into her husband’s chest.


“It’s so…sad!” she wailed. “That bastard Yaxley hurting his muggle born wife…handing her out to other men to have…have…Disgusting! Then there’s the fact that Abraxas loses his life trying to…help the woman who was pregnant with his child…only to be killed like he was!” She sobbed again, taking the handkerchief from Severus. Hermione mopped at her face and blew her nose. “I want to go home and…and…”


“Have some soup?” Severus murmured.


“No, I want to watch you get drunk,” she whispered, resting her head on his chest. “But maybe later we can ask Salt and Pepper for some vegetable ramen.”


It wasn’t until the couple were walking out of their own floo that Severus asked, “Why would you cry like that?”


“I didn’t want to be yelled at,” she told him, as she went over to the bathroom to wash her face. When she looked up as she was drying her chin to find her husband standing in the doorway. “What?”


“Since when have you become so Slytherin in your tactics?” he asked her.


“We’ve been married for five years, courting as well as living together for the year before that,” she murmured, slipping up to him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “I do believe we’ve learned much from each other over the years.”


“But to cry?” he asked, leaning down to kiss the corner of her eye. “Even at your sneakiest you’ve never used tears before. You abhor using them as you refer to that tactic of them as being far too childish.”


Sighing she leaned against him all the more, muttering, “It may have started with the hormones.”


“Just started?” he inquired, rubbing her back gently in a soothing circular motion.


“Okay all of it was the hormones, but I didn’t want to admit it,” she complained to him quietly. “I’m sorry.”


“No need for apologies,” he told her, kissing her temple. “Just try to do that sort of thing elsewhere, like around Molly Weasley or Ginny Potter.”


“I’ll try, but I’m telling you it was like an ambush of emotion,” she said, looking up to his face. “It was unreal how sudden it was.” A look of horror crossed her face. “Please don’t tell Lucius it was hormones! I’ll never hear the end of it. Say it was me being a manipulative bitch or something like that.”


“Just as long as you realize your logic is faulty,” he murmured. “He would know better than to believe that.”


She rested her head back on his chest with a depressed sigh.


“Word has it that Salt and Pepper have learned how to make Vietnamese beef noodle soup.”


Lifting her head she murmured, “That sounds even better than ramen.”


“I’ll send word to the kitchen,” Severus said as he walked her over to their bedroom. “But you lie down for a bit.”


He was still watching her when Lucius came up behind him.


“I thought of something once you left,” his friend whispered. “Pregnancy hormones. I had forgotten what they were like.”


“She wanted me to tell you that she was being a manipulative bitch.” Lucius only snorted at this as they walked away from the room. “What can I say?” He paused for a bit. “Hormones as well as the fact that she didn’t want to be yelled at…” Severus looked over to his friend. “The combination wasn’t a good one.”


***


Sirius, Harry, and Kingsley all arrived at the school for the meeting early that morning. Hermione had welcomed them into her and her husband’s personal quarters. She took them over to the sitting area that was set up to receive them. Hot coffee as well as tea and biscuits were there for them to eat.


“So what is this all about?” Sirius asked as he leaned back with his coffee in hand.


“I thought you would like to know what Lucius, Severus, and myself were able to find out last night.” She leaned back, looking at them with a smile.


Hermione went on to explain how Lucius’s father had an affair with Mrs. Yaxley and she had a child as a result.


“How did you even know…?” Harry waved his hands as if referring to everything she was talking about. “All the man said was three words!”


“Yes, but very telling words,” she stated. “Okay the first two weren’t all that telling. ‘Yaxley’ and ‘bastard’, as you know were the first two words. Yaxley, as I’ve been told, was more than willing to couple with just about anyone and a child resulting in any of those relations wouldn’t have been a shock. But he looked over to Lucius Malfoy and said, ‘blonde’. More than likely meaning that the Yaxley bastard was a blond.” All three men still looked blank faced. “Meaning that the child was not of the patriarch, but of the matriarch of the Yaxley family. And that the father of this child was a Malfoy.”


“And you got this from three words?” Sirius asked a bit shocked.


Hermione blinked at them all owlishly. “It was simple logic.”


“Right,” Harry said sounding totally unconvinced. “Simple.”


“We were able to substantiate this after talking to Abraxas Malfoy’s portrait last night after we left the hospital.” She took up the herbal tea and sipped on it, letting out a long and withered sigh. “What I wouldn’t give for coffee with caffeine.” Hermione set aside the tea and looked over to them again. “So chances are that the person sending the bodies to Malfoy Manor is a Yaxley, but which one…” She shrugged. “We need more information.”


“Such as?” Kingsley inquired.


The question rankled her as she sat before them. “You do realize that you made me go on leave?”


Harry, who was familiar with pregnancy hormones in a witch and how her anger would soon have items exploding about them if they didn’t nip this in the bud, went over to her whispering, “We need your help Hermione. And yes we might have been premature in asking you to go on leave…”


And that’s when her full teacup shattered, sending tea all over the room.


“I was made to go on medical leave for a year,” she said in a stony voice. “You mean to say that every time a difficult case comes up that I am going to be made to do work that I won’t be compensated for.” The chairs the other men were sitting on began to tremble. Kingsley and Sirius leapt from them before they rocketed up and crashed into the stone ceiling. “Time that I am supposed to be tending to my health and that of my child.”


“Why are you angry?” Sirius demanded, even as Harry was trying to get him to stop.


The coffee pot went flying and smashed into the wall. “Why? Statement,” she snapped. “ ‘We need more information’. Response, ‘Such as?’” Hermione stood up. “For Merlin sake use your brains! We need to know which Yaxley. Period. Now go get Yaxley’s corpse and test the DNA to see if there are familial relations with Lucius, making sure that there are no glamours on the body.” She whipped out her wand. “And if you ask me one more bloody word, I swear I will hex you with something not even the curse breakers will be able to undo within my child’s lifetime, never mind yours.”


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