Seven Preposterous Things

That night, Hermione spent most of what was left of the darkness reconciling her fearsome Potions master with the smelly drunk who had kissed her so badly. What she came up with was a figure of decidedly human proportions. For one thing, it cheered her immeasurably to know Professor Snape was as confused by the Headmaster's constant machinations as she was. A Professor Snape who lived like a pig and worried, actually worried, about the future seemed an altogether different creature than the stern taskmaster she had worked for years trying to impress.

The cool, obsidian god had... not feet of clay, but rather an everyday sort of human heart.

And he'd kissed her.

Badly.

It put him in the same category as boys like Ron in a certain way. He, like them, saw her sexually, wanted something sexual from her. It meant, in some strange manner, he saw her as attainable and on his own level.

The trouble was that he was undoubtedly mistaken. He was a spy and a schoolmaster. She was a schoolgirl - a bright schoolgirl, she'd grant herself that - but a schoolgirl all the same. She might have been through a scrape or seven, but that was hardly comparable to 20 years of experience and the no-doubt exciting life of a spy.

Boys, even the fully-grown variety, were a bit slow, weren't they?

Still, she couldn't dismiss the kiss entirely. A bad kiss was more encouraging, less frightening, than it would have been had he kissed her as though he were a character from one of Lavender's romance novels. Theoretically, at some point in the future, she very much wanted to do further research, despite the fact that she found the entire being-kissed-by-a-drunken-teacher business inappropriate. As she drifted off around dawn, she hoped for one last time that some portion of his clumsiness could be attributed to drink. She also hoped, someday in the future, she would have an opportunity to give him a second try. In a more appropriate setting, of course.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Professor Snape murdered the Headmaster, and Hermione's late night wonderings became painfully irrelevant.


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Millie was both relieved and annoyed that her Head of House had pulled Draco's tenderloin off the spit when push came to shove. It pleased her that he wasn't dead, because she had to admit she had known him as long as she could recall, and she might miss him a little.

A very little.

His father used to bring him round to play while the adults plotted, so even though he was somewhat poncy and tended to pout when he didn't get his way, she was used to him and might have been a little sorry if he had wound up a natural blond spot on the front steps of Hogwarts. It was also irritating, because wasn't that just like the jammy bastard: getting someone else to save his lily-white arse in the end.

The school descended into exactly the sort of chaos Millie would have predicted. Classes were held but attendance was optional. No one paid much attention to anything that wasn't Potter. Not students. Not teachers. Not even Filch. She liked to think under normal circumstances the Slytherins, at least, would have noticed her wearing such a bloody ugly piece of jewellery. Or any jewellery, for that matter.

Summer holidays came and Millie kissed her daddy, took a deep breath of gingerbread scented air, and got down to work. Deep in the enchanted woods, she fashioned herself a place where she could go about her business unbothered. She crowded the trees and wove them round with vines until they made themselves into a living green wall that from the outside looked like nothing but a thicket. Inside, she took her trusty Nimbus and swept out the ground, so no plant would grow; it was a broom after all. She made herself a door of rough stone and set the wards. Neither her parents, nor her Gran said much of anything about her long absences from the cottage, except that she was growing up, and at the age when it was perfectly natural for a witch to want to wander the woods alone with her familiar all hours of the day and night.

And, of course, "I don't mind how long you're out with the moon and the sun so long as your chores get done."

She collected sacks of hippogriff dung to gestate the homunculus and bell jars for after, and she assembled her swallow bones, liquid silver, and the globes of poison gas which were the final ingredients she was able to gather on her own. It was Draco's homunculus, when all was said and done, and she needed nail, skin, and hair from him, if he expected her to get started. That, and fresh semen. She wasn't sure how they were going to manage that one.

One day, an utterly nondescript barn owl brought her a plain brown-wrappered box. In the box was chocolates.

Millie, with nothing else to do, stretched out on the dirt floor with her cat, Whack, purring on her chest, and ate candy. It was better than hitting herself in the forehead with a plank.

She had ordered Draco, over the bracelet mirror, not to tell her where he and Snape were. It wasn't bloody likely anyone would ever think to ask her, and even less likely that she'd tell them, but she'd rather not take the risk. Still, she got to wondering sometimes, where he was and what he was thinking of. Not her, of course; she took that as granted.

She had worked her way through half the box of chocolates when she heard the sound of a team of horses running, yes, running through her wood. She sat up quickly, earning one of Whack's claws right in her chest for her trouble. No one came to her wood by accident. In the distance, the sound of wheels striking stones caught her well-tuned ears.

She literally flew back to the cottage, weaving back and forth among the trees, barely above the ground, Whack yowling on the back of her broom all the way.

She didn't know whether to be relieved or scream in terror that it was the Malfoy family coach and six that pulled to a stop in front of her Gran's gingerbread house. Well, at least it wasn't someone evil.

She was more than puzzled, though, when she saw Mrs. Malfoy step from the carriage, then carefully help another Mrs. Malfoy from the carriage, followed quickly by another Mrs. Malfoy, who stepped out of the carriage in her own.

Despite herself, Millie smiled; those silly buggers. A second later, hot and cold warred in her gut; those silly buggers.

Millie wiped most of the leaves out of her plaits with her hands, and decided having a dusty arse was better than knocking the dust off your arse in front of Mrs. Malfoy, whichever one was the real her. She probably had a special spell to repel all dirt from her person. Come to think of it, she probably didn't go around lolling in the dirt in the first place.

Millie curtsied looking from one Mrs. Malfoy to the other, and her Dad opened the door behind her.

"Narcissa," he said, grimly "good to see all of you. You're a bit early; Prunie just put the kettle on."

In a line, the Mrs. Malfoys filed inside and Millie watched in fascination as the second in line allowed Millie's dad to seat her, while the other two sat themselves without any trumpeting.

Millie's mum was fiddling with the cabinets, bringing out the breads; two black, one white, one brown. Butter pulled out of the peat just yesterday, currant buns with icing sugar on top, cakes - a white with pink sugar, a ginger with white sugar, and one with green sugar runes marking x's along the top edge and sugar violets. She didn't like the look of that last one. She watched as her mum set it a bit away from the others, on top of her little silver filigree stand.

Her gran watched them all, puffing on the stump of her black cigar and rubbing, as it always seemed to help her think, on the hairy mole on her left cheek.

"Severus... Narcissa... Boy," Gran nodded three times and blew a feather shaped plume of smoke across the table. "If you'd come looking to make a match before, we might have been tempted, but you've come to us after you've fallen on hard times."

What?

What?

"Granny?" Millie said desperately.

"You're not the only one who has secret conferences, girl." Her granny laughed then turned back to the three Mrs. Malfoys. "Narcissa, the boy is going to have to prove himself. We may be known for our treacle mines, but this is the real treasure of the Bulstrodes." Millie's granny waved her cheroot in her general direction and Millie felt sick.

"What I don't understand is where you got this barmy idea in the first place, Draco," Millie said, addressing one of the two Mrs. Malfoys who seemed to be getting taller by the moment, but whose hair was staying the same wintery white.

Millie's mum pulled the treacle tart off the cooling board, and set out the biscuits, all with jewelled centres. She felt pleased in a cosy, defiant sort of way that they hadn't gone and made a fancy tea on account of the Malfoys.

"Did you forget my kippers, Prunie?" her dad asked; he hadn't even braided his hair. She noted he wasn't wearing his robes, only the rough shirt and knee breeches he wore when they weren't going anywhere. He wasn't out to impress anyone.

"Out of kippers; owl's late." Her mum grunted absentmindedly almost stirring the tea with the stick end of her potions spoon, but remembering herself at the last moment.

"Blast," he muttered.

"I'm sorry about your kippers, Mr. Bulstrode, but we were talking about Millie and I," Draco whinged as he, well, turned back into Draco.

Millicent looked to see Snape staring at the ceiling as though he would succumb from sheer boredom at any moment. He'd probably heard quite a bit of Draco whinging over the past several weeks.

"I want to marry Millicent, sir, madams, because she is..." Draco waved his hands in the air. "She's like a..." he sputtered.

All heads turned to him expectantly.

"Tea's ready," Millie's mum said shoving a mug in front of Draco.

He took a swallow. "Millie could hex any Slytherin at Hogwarts into last year."

"Anything else, Boy?" her mum asked.

"She's got the biggest bubbies in school, and I hear she's a champion shagger," Draco said, then pressed his lips together hard, his entire face turning beet red.

"Veritas, how droll," said the real Mrs. Malfoy, "and sensible."

"That all, son?" Mrs. Malfoy asked Draco.

"She scares me, and I think I love her. I trust her implicitly," Draco said in a great rush.

Millie didn't know whether to burst out laughing or run from the house in tears.

"If I may ask, what have you got against my son, Millicent, that you don't want to become my new daughter?" Mrs. Malfoy asked smiling sweetly.

Millie couldn't help it. She squirmed.

"Well?" her granny asked.

"He whinges and whines... as much as a new born pup," she said simply.

"He'll grow out of that; his father did," Mrs. Malfoy said. "Why don't you like him?"

"I like him all right." Millie looked around desperately. "He's not hard to look at and he's respectful...to me at least. But he is awfully full of himself."

"That he won't grow out of; I suspect it comes with the name," Millie's would-be mother-in-law said. "But is a bit of arrogance really so distasteful? You seem to have more than a portion yourself."

"Do not!" Millie said indignantly.

Every adult at the table started laughing.

She didn't see what was so bloody funny!

"And like he said, we haven't shagged. I don't want marry him if he's crap in bed," she said, as her granny laughed louder than ever.

"He's 17, what else would he be?" Her granny laughed, waving her cheroot.

"I beg your pardon?" Draco said, his tone reeking with offence taken.

Mrs. Malfoy covered her mouth with her hand, but the look of glee filled her eyes.

"Not a wizard under 30 worth takin' off your knickers for," her mum nodded in agreement, "but at his age you could train him up right."

Her granny took a bite of biscuit. "Severus, why don't you take these young people out for a bit. Let the grown ups sort things out. You are, of course, free to find refuge in our wood."

"I am forever in your debt, Mrs. Eye, and I could do with a walk," Professor Snape said, rising from his chair. "Phillip, I believe your kippers have arrived."

Sure enough, a whopping great owl was winging its way toward the front window, the familiar grease-stained parcel of smoked kippers in its talons. Millie rushed forward to open the door before it...

Too late. She hated it when the stupid bird smashed into the boiled sugar window. Half the bloody fish were scattered in front of the house, and someone had to cook up a new window. Millie had the ridiculous feeling there was an omen she should be trying to recall, something about a front garden full of fish.

Her mother whistled loud and shrill and the grocer's bird made his way in with what kippers he had left, flying over her shoulder through the crowded kitchen.

"Are you gonna to get going or do you plan to stand there with the door open all day?" Her granny squawked at her. Before she knew it the three of them, four if you counted Whack the cat and she did, were hustled outside without so much as a napkin full of biscuits for nourishment, not a single cake. Some people certainly were losing track of their priorities, letting their child go hungry like that.

Oh well, there was nothing to be done about it at the moment.

Millie wondered between thoughts of biscuits exactly how they were going to get shut of Professor Snape so she could gather the last of the ingredients for the homunculus from Draco. Only he wasn't a professor any more, was he. Professor or no he was still one of her Daddy's best chums, and if her Daddy got wind she was being disloyal to the cause... Well, Millie had never had a spanking in her life, but if anything could get her in trouble this would be it.

It was stupid. She was practically a grown witch and they treated her like an infant. She had a sinking feeling her Daddy would still be calling her "Millipede" when she was 100. She wondered if that was just the way of life; you could be as serious and competent as you liked away from home, but the mere presence of your mum and dad reduced you to a toddler.

Snape cleared his throat meaningfully as they walked, as if she was supposed to come up with some great emotional revelation. She looked at him sharply.

"Uncle Severus is a traitor," Draco said, and Millie almost tripped over Whack winding his way back and forth between her feet.

"Good thing he isn't really your uncle then," she said, righting herself.

"We don't need to hide anything from him," Draco insisted.

"Is that so?" Millie asked, giving nothing away.

"Yes, it is most definitely so," Snape said, stopping dead in front of Millie's magical bower. She'd thought it was perfectly camouflaged. She thought she could simply veer slightly off course and they'd never even know they'd been close. Now Snape was standing at the door expecting to be let in.

Snape suddenly turned round and looked down at her, his arms folded. Where did he get off, being so tall?

"Millicent, have you sufficient ingredients for a second homunculus?" he asked.

Millie shrugged; she had enough for three or four. Trust fucking Draco Malfoy to spill all to the one person who could get them both in loads of trouble.

"Then I would like to ask you, Millicent, as someone who has done his best care for you - almost as a second father, if I may flatter myself - I ask you to make me a homunculus as well, and when the proper time comes, transfer my Dark Mark to it," he said it, staring into her face, earnest with the barest edge of a plea to his tone.

"Why'd you turn? I thought they were your friends?" she asked him. It was the only thing she could think to ask.

"My friendship for your father is not feigned, if that's your question. I simply doubt the Wizard who leads them," he said.

Millie looked up at him blankly. That wasn't enough and they both knew it.

"I was Draco's age when I took the Mark. By the time I was 21, I knew I had made the greatest mistake of my life. The cause is a pile of steaming dung; I'm sure you've worked it out for yourself. Unfortunately the other Death Eaters refuse to accept it's little more than an excuse for an overblown lizard to gain power. In the end, blood purity, as an ideal, is bound to fail. It is a simple question of mathematics. Since the deaths of the Potters, everything I have done I have done at Dumbledore's request," Snape said.

"Including kill him?" she asked soberly.

"More or less. I gave Draco's Mother my wizard's oath I would protect her child. A dead man is of little use to any master. With that in mind, Dumbledore insisted I fulfil my pledge regardless of what the particulars were; therefore, I believe it was Dumbledore's desire I do as I did," he said, a hint of discomfort suddenly apparent.

"So you aren't sure?" Millie asked. "What do you know for certain?"

"Not much," Snape answered.

"So it is possible that Dumbledore wanted you to sacrifice yourself?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.

"Not a thought I relish but, yes, it is possible," Snape said.

Millie's brain made a number of rapid calculations, and she came to a decision. "Well, step into my parlour, you two, and I'll see what I can do," and with that she lifted the wards and the immovable stone door swung wide.

Snape's eyes swept over the place she had made for herself, the work area in particular. Draco picked up her half-finished chocolates and started in on them.

Millie turned her back to the pair, separating a small pile of ingredients for each homunculus: swallow bones, ground ruby, dust of emerald, powdered lapis lazuli, red earth, green earth, a quantity of lead, mercury, copper, and sulphur, and all that was left was to collect the hair, blood, nails, skin, and semen.

At the end of the table, she formed two nests of dung.

"Who's first, then?" she asked.

Snape nodded jerkily. "May I?" he asked, taking Millie's knife.

He made quick work of dropping a slip of nail, a sliver of skin, a long black hair, and a splash of red blood on the pile closest to him. Millie couldn't help but stand mesmerised at the thought of what was going to come next.

"Excuse me," Snape said archly.

Millie found herself embarrassed to realise she was staring rather pointedly at his crotch.

Snape raised one eyebrow at her burning red face and motioned with one long finger for her to turn round. She forced the shame out and felt her blood obligingly turn back cold in her veins.

"Someone should have a talk with your Granny about your manners," Snape said before falling silent.

Sod him. As though he was going to tell her granny about this. As bloody if.

When Millie looked up Draco was smirking at her. The smirk quickly turned into a leer.

If she listened, Millie could hear the rustle of Snape's clothes and his restrained but speeding breath. If she concentrated, she could hear his heart pounding. Draco draped his hand casually across his pelvis. His lips pursed.

Her skin went to gooseflesh, Snape was taking bleeding forever. She folded her arms across her chest and frowned at Draco. He laughed silently. Bastard.

After what seemed like years, Whack yowled. Loudly.

Snape cleared his throat.

"My contribution is complete," he said, adjusting his robes.

Draco laughed aloud at that. "It's about time. I thought we were going to have to get your picture of Granger out of your bag."

Granger? Millie felt sick at the idea. She was so gauche, so beneath Snape. Could Snape really fancy that know-it-all bag of bones?

"Shut up, Draco," Snape said in a tone more harsh than he would have used were there nothing to the accusation.

Remembering herself, Millie stepped to the worktable and drew her wand.

"Assa Nissi Massa," she said, tapping her wand against the messy pile, drawing all her power of concentration to a single beam of focus.

The puddle of semen began to grow amidst the dirt and gems and bones, blood, skin, and nails, churning through the other ingredients until the entire mass took on a gleaming pearly white sheen. Still it pulsed.

Millie set down her wand, and with bare hands she shaped a likeness of Professor Snape. The nose was a bit out of proportion, but the legs were the same length, which would have been worse.

With infinite care, she set the embryonic homunculus into the nest of dung and carefully, ever so carefully, covered the tiny pulsing shape with more dung.

"Is that all?" Draco asked. "That wasn't proper Latin."

"It was the incantation in Paracelsus' notebook. And it's not even close to the last of it. I have to tend it every day for the next forty days and after that I have to find a way to keep it from running off and getting eaten by something in the forest. They're notorious for running off, homunculi. We'll have to start all over if they run away before I can transfer the marks. One of you fetch me a towel, I'd like to wipe my hands before I go on," Millie said. Draco really did have a talent for getting right up her nose.

Draco meanwhile had stripped down to nothing and was smiling like Christmas had come early.

"I'm ready if you are, Millie." Draco shook his todger at her.

Snape rolled his eyes.

"First things first," Millie snorted and unceremoniously plucked a small cluster of blonde pubic hairs from their nest, set them with the other ingredients, and picked up her knife.

Draco, screamed like a little girl and leapt backwards in surprise, though it was difficult to tell whether it was caused by having his pubic hair yanked or from fear of the blade Millie was wielding.

"Of all the..." Draco squealed.

"Where shall I cut you?" Millie asked. "The thigh isn't likely to show in public, but I 'spect it will hurt more."

"I'm not afraid," he said and opened his legs to her.

"Never said you were," Millie said flatly, and out of the kindness of her heart she avoided further torment of Draco and collected his nails, skin, and blood efficiently. "I suggested you were vain."

"Now the..." she said, as she added the ingredients.

"My..." Draco said.

"Paracelsus called it 'essence,'" she said scornfully. "Sounds like a cooking term."

Snape was meanwhile studying the greenery with rapt attention.

Draco nodded, most of his bravado gone, and came to stand naked in front of Millie's worktable.

He wrapped his left hand familiarly around his hard penis.

Watching him like that, Millie had to admit he was not painful to look at. The well-formed muscles in the back of his thighs were particularly not unpleasant to watch, tensing as his hips bucked forward. His piece itself wasn't bad either. Of the handful - she sniggered inwardly at her own joke - Millie had seen, quite a few were dead ugly, or runts, or both. Draco's cock looked to be nice sized, but not unnatural, with good symmetry and even pigmentation. A good looking prick all around, not unlike Draco himself. It had taken her five or six times of seeing Greg's todger to get used to the purple.

The way the muscles on Draco's belly fit taut together like well-woven reeds was quite comely as well.

She had to fight off the urge to give him a smack on the bottom. He would have taken it as encouragement.

Meanwhile, Draco was making some rather frustrated noises.

She kept looking.

"Could you...lend me a hand... get your finger out of your mouth... or something, Bulstrode?" Draco said tersely.

She hadn't realised she was biting her thumb. She'd have been embarrassed if she hadn't been the one who was fully dressed.

It was in the name of magic and not just for fun, so she supposed it wasn't completely weak of her to, as he put it, lend him a hand.

As he requested, she slipped her small, rough hand over his perfectly manicured fingers and added slightly to the pressure. She brought the other to his balls, and he used those long white fingers to brace himself against the worktable.

Millie, as a rule, liked to do things well. She had no reason to try to draw this out, so she didn't. She squeezed his cock hard, then relaxed her grip to brush up and down his length with only a whisper of a touch. He moaned on cue.

She squeezed the head hard, then again at the base. Once more, she lightened her touch to the softest zephyr over his cock and balls. She squeezed the base in her fist once, twice, four, then five times, all the while tickling his glans.

He whimpered, and she aimed him quite easily in the direction of the rest of the components for the Homunculus. If she took a bit more care sculpting the figure of his "little man" than Snape's, who would know, or blame her?

When they returned to the cottage, there was bottle of wine on the table.

"Can you give me a good reason you don't want to marry young Malfoy?" her daddy said the moment she set foot through the door.

For the life of her, Millie could not think of one, and she tried, honest she did.

"I'm too young," she said finally.

"Of course you're too young, that's how it works. Marry young, while you still don't have the sense of a goat, or you'll wind up luring unsuspecting wizards into the woods and bearing bastards like a sensible witch," her granny chortled and lit a new cheroot.

"That settles it," her mum said, pounding her ham-sized fist on the table. "You'll marry young Malfoy for a year and a day. If he can't show us all what he's made of by then, we'll throw him back and cast our line again."

"To set things off on the proper footing, may I present you with the bride price, Mrs. Eye," Mrs. Malfoy said, daintily removing a hanky from her reticule and passed it to Millie's Gran.

Millie's Granny unfolded the hanky to reveal a ruby the size of a duck's egg nestled amid the black lace. Millie's Granny almost smiled.

Millie wondered how much of Mrs. Malfoy's price was paid because Draco had his spoilt little heart set on marrying her, and how much was paid because as long as he was in Millie's wood he was impossible for the outside world to touch.

Millie's blood ran cold in her veins, and the next few minutes didn't seem quite real. Draco's mum touched her wand to the corner of her eye, and a single glistening tear attached itself to the tip of her wand. Her own mum did likewise, and they both dropped their tears on the top of the cake decorated with runes and violets. The whole business shimmered for a second.

Then Millie's dad and Draco's mum stood them in front of the hearth and made them promise...something. Honestly, Millie was too busy panicking to pay close attention to what she was saying. Inwardly, she was swearing to herself this was going to be the last time Draco Bloody Malfoy got his own way with anything if she had anything to say about it.

Her granny kissed her when they were finished. "May your new husband be young, meek, and lusty abed, and may you soon be widowed if he isn't."

Millie watched Mrs. Malfoy give Draco a look that meant this was no game.

"My little boy is all grown up now," she said, and dabbed at her perfectly dry eyes.

In a fit of insanity, Millie took a long look at Draco. They were married now; why the hell shouldn't she do as she liked? She'd show that Draco what he'd signed up for. Roughly, she grasped Draco by the waist, leaned him back and gave that over-privileged brat the most thorough kissing she could muster. When she finished, his eyelids were fluttering and his face was flushed. Sweet Merlin, the tosser had fainted and there was small damp circle on the front of his robes.

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Author's Note: Thanks to Shiv for top notch beta on this chapter as well as Chapters 1, 2, and 3. For those who aren’t aware of Paracelsus wikkipedia has an entry for him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

One accomplishment not mentioned in the wikki was Paracelsus' claim of having successfully made a homunculus from frog bones and his own semen.