The Fix

No one, but NO ONE reviewed my last one shot. So for the sake of my sanity and for the love of all that's holy, REVIEW! Thank you.

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***

Marcus Flint watched as the woman he adored was all but hanging off of the body of the captain of his quidditch team, Oliver Wood. What did that self-important wanker have that he didn’t? He was just as good of a player if not more so, with more than a little bit of arrogance showing as he thoughts watching the two laughing joyously.


And what was it with him wearing his gold quidditch medals to a pub?


“Talk about asinine,” he said out loud in a harsh grumble.


“What is?” came a soft female voice from behind him.


Turning slowly he saw none other than Hermione Granger sitting with a glass of fire whiskey in her hand and a bottle that looked like she had already made a dent into the contents.


“Wearing his quidditch gold medals,” he said shortly.


She looked over to where he had been glaring. “Yes, it is, but you do realize that all that glitters is not gold?” Hermione’s whiskey colored eyes looked back to his own dark blue ones. “You know why he does it, don’t you?” He shook his head no. Hermione patted the seat next to herself. “Come over, I won’t bite that hard and you might learn something that you could actually use in your existence.”


Marcus went over and sat next to her. “I’m not an idiot.”


“Never said you were,” she murmured, motioning to the barmaid to get them another glass. “I said that you might learn something that you could actually use in your existence, meaning that although classes like Divination may have been fun for you, it was terribly impractical, wasn’t it?”


He let out a snort of laughter. “Too true.”


The glass arrived and soon Hermione was pouring him a drink. “So like I was asking, do you know why he wears his Quidditch medals?” He shook his head no as she handed him his drink. “Cheers.” She tapped her glass to his and taking a sip of the fury libation. “It’s like this,” she said hoarsely. “He does it to boost his confidence.” Hermione cleared her throat. “Pardon, do I need to repeat that?”


“No, I heard you the first time.”


“Good. Oliver Wood knows a lot of quidditch. Loads upon loads about a game I could care less about, sorry.”


“No problem,” he murmured.


“But, and this is important to know, what he knows about women is far less and thus he has no confidence that he can attract them as anything other than the quidditch star he is.” She took another sip of her drink. “It’s sad really.”


“When you put it like that, it sounds like it,” he muttered. “What are you doing in a pub in Bulgaria?”


“It’s an anniversary,” she murmured, looking sad. “Today is the day that I would have gotten married to Ron Weasley five years ago if he didn’t go get himself killed by a fucking quaffle.” She rolled her eyes. “He wasn’t even in the bloody game.” She sighed heavily. “I was here for a potion master’s conference. Severus Snape was the keynote speaker. I thought I would be remiss if I didn’t go to it. Lovely speech.” She nodded. “It was something people will note in the tomes of potions history and if it had been any other day but today, I would have soaked up the information like a sponge and thrived like a flower in the sun.”


“How long have you been drinking for?” he asked her.


She looked at her watch. “What day is it today?”


“Sunday.”


“Since Friday.”


He winced at that.


“But enough about me,” she said. “Do you like her?” Hermione looked over to the woman. “She’s a groupie, isn’t she?”


“Yes, but she…” Hermione’s eyes went back to him and he was forced to admit the truth even if it was this one time. “She would be happy with any quidditch star making more than a few thousand galleons.”


“I know,” she answered, leaning back. “But you still want her.” She paused to burp quietly, say excuse me and go on. “Why?” When he just stared at her she said, “You can do better.”


He looked around himself and back towards her. “You have looked at me, right? I’m not what anyone would call a good looking bloke.”


“It’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” she told him. “Trust me.”


“My teeth can’t be fixed by magic.”


“Then go to the muggles and get it done,” she murmured. “True, it would hurt. But then you could have pretty teeth and learn how to smile charmingly at the women rather than snarling as you’re prone to do.” She nodded. “Yep, that would be good. Another thing, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but have you given any thought to, you know, expanding your vocabulary past what you would need to play quidditch?”


“I’m not going to chat up some bird just to get into her knickers.”


“Well, you can’t throw them over your shoulder or drag them out of a place by their hair. That’s called abduction and that’s illegal.” Again she nodded that she was in the right. “You don’t want to go to prison.” She leaned in closer to him. “Very bad witches and wizards are in prison.”


“I know,” he said flatly.


“Yeah, and you have the tattoo to prove it,” she murmured. “Didn’t mean to bring up sore times. Sorry.”


He looked around again, before asking, “What do I need to learn to chat up birds?”


“Ask them about the things in their life. Mind you, don’t let them dominate the conversation. It’ll be deadly dull otherwise. But if you’re about to start a dialogue between you that would be good.”


He thought it over. “Are we having a dialogue?”


“Of sorts,” she murmured. “Though truth be told mostly it’s the drink on my part. Again, I must apologize. It in no way reflects upon you.”


He barely repressed a smile.


The clock chimed. Muttering a curse, she pulled out a vial and took a sobering potion. It was with a wince that she stood up.


“Here,” she said, pulling out a business card. “That’s my parent’s office. They are muggle dentists. They fix teeth. If you’re serious about it, go to them. I’ll let them know about you. If you do so, I’ll brew you something for the pain.” Grabbing a bag that was resting on the ground next to her, she said, “I must be off. Let me know if you’re serious.”


“Why?”


“Because I’m going to help you.”


***


It wasn’t until five weeks later that Marcus called the number from what muggles call a telephone. Before too long he had made an appointment and had hung up. What had he done, Marcus asked himself. Why would he call to have his teeth fixed by a bunch of muggles?


When he arrived at the office for his consultation, Hermione was outside of the building waiting for him with a smile. He must have looked more than a little shocked to see her, as she was soon laughing to herself as she went over to him.


“I wanted to make certain that you felt comfortable,” she told him. “To make sure you understand what they tell you and things like that. Moral support as well.”


“I’m still not sure I should do this,” he muttered, glaring at the people in the waiting room. More than a few of them ducked behind their random magazines when he did so. “I’ve lived this long with them this way. I can survive if they continue to be so.”


“True,” she said. “But wouldn’t you feel better about yourself if your smile looked better?”


“I’ll still have the same face,” he mumbled.


“That’s why they invented plastic surgery and glamours for, Marcus,” she sighed.


“Plastic what?”


Chuckling she said, “I’ll explain it to you later. Right now you have a dentist to speak to.”


The consultation took about a half an hour and when it was done, Marcus made an appointment to have his teeth fixed.


Mildly confused, he kept asking her what her parents were speaking about once they had left the office.


“What’s a veneer again?”


Smiling she said, “Why don’t we go to eat over at the Three Broomsticks and we can go over everything that happened at the office?”


Once at the pub she wrote out everything that he didn’t understand, even giving him text book names to be able to do research on it.


“You want me to do research?” he asked flatly.


“Yes.”


“I didn’t even do that when I was in school,” he muttered.


“Look at it this way,” she pointed out to him. “Research will never be your cup of tea, which is all well and good. But if you don’t find out about this, how will you know if something goes wrong?”


He swallowed thickly. “Go wrong? You mean something…”


“Calm down, will you?” she told him. “All I am saying is the more informed the better.


He narrowed his eyes. “That’s it?”


“That’s it,” Hermione murmured. “They really are good at what they do.” The alarm on her watch went off. “Damn. I have to go. I have two potions in stasis that need my attention.” She stood up. “See you later…”


His hand shot out and pulled her to a stop. “You don’t have to be helping me like this.” A small, rather unbecoming red filled his cheeks. “Thanks.”


Smiling she murmured, “You’re welcome.” Absently, she stroked his hair. “Nice texture.” And Hermione went on her way briskly.


Frowning he reached up and touched his hair. It was just, well, his hair. What it felt like wasn’t important, was it?


***


Draco blinked at him. “What was that again? For a moment I thought you just asked me if what your hair felt like was important.”


Flushing Marcus muttered, “Never mind.”


“No,” he said, stopping him. “Why do you care? You haven’t before now, Marcus.”


Clearing his throat he thought over what to say to him, “There’s this bird. She’s been helping me out.”


“Quidditch groupie?” he drawled.


“No, she hates the game,” Marcus answered, seeing the clear shock on his friend’s face. “So like I was saying, she’s helping me out with something. When she left lunch today, she touched my hair and said, ‘Nice texture.’ What’s it mean?”


Draco studied his friend a moment. The big man had never been one to be vain. It was to the point that he wouldn’t fix what he could simply have done. About his only saving grace had been his hair, even if it was badly cut.


“It means you have nice hair that needs to be styled properly,” he told him.


“She didn’t say that.”


“No, I am. And if you want that bird, you’d do it.”


“No, it’s not like that,” he told him. “She’s trying to help me get other birds.”


“What?” Draco looked at him stunned. “That’s not right.”


“Yeah, I think she’s still mourning her dead fiancée.” He sighed. “Well, that’s what I was able to learn when I met her at the pub in Bulgaria. She was so pissed that there was little to do to shut her up.”


“I can think of one way…”


“Hey!” Marcus snapped. “Show some respect! She may look like shite, but she’s been helping me and the least we can do is not to speak ill of her.”


“Who is this paragon of virtue?” he asked dryly.


“That bird we went to school with, Granger.”


Sitting up straight, he asked, “Hermione Granger?”


“Yeah, that’s her.” His eyes narrowed. “Why?”


Draco sat back. “From what I heard she dropped out of the wizarding world the day Weasley had the misfortune of being killed by a well aimed quaffle. Rumor had it that it was murder. That’s what she said at any rate to anyone that would listen to her.” He snorted with cold laughter. “She went mad some say, for which I personally think that if it were true, that it couldn’t have happened to a better person.”


***


“Did you go mad?” was the first thing that Marcus said to her when they met up at the parent’s dentist office for his appointment.


Gapping at him she asked, “Pardon me?”


“You heard me, did you go mad?”


“No, why?”


“Draco said to me that you went mad when Weasley was killed.”


She thought it over before nodding and whispering, “No, I didn’t go mad. A went into a deep grief, but that’s nothing not to be expected. Which meant I didn’t go out much. But then I wouldn’t have gone out much anyway, as I was training to be a potion master at the time as well. You could say I was well and truly occupied.”


He thought it over and muttered, “Makes sense.”


“Yes, that it does,” she murmured. “Now let’s go get those teeth fixed.”


***


Marcus couldn’t stop staring at his new, white, very straight teeth. At one point, Hermione had to stop him from walking into the middle of the street as he was staring at himself in the compact mirror that she had lent to him.


“For Merlin sake, Marcus, take care!” She snagged the mirror from him. “You need to watch where you’re going or else you’ll be too dead to care about your new teeth.”


They ended up going their own ways soon there after. But right before she was going to leave him, she reached out again and touched his hair.


“Not bad, but it needs a bit of a trim,” she murmured. “Have you thought about getting it styled?” When he just stared at her blankly, she smiled. “Of course not. Never mind. I’ll talk with you later. We still have miles to go yet.”


Not knowing of what to make of it, he went to the one person that he thought could decipher what she meant.


Malfoy was laughing his ass off. “It appears that she has made you her pet project! She’s helping you get fixed up, as it were.”


Marcus snorted. “Why?”


“That’s what I would like to know,” he said blandly. “Why would she go out of her way and do something for a man she barely knows?” He thought it over a moment. “Doesn’t matter.” Draco took a sip of his fire whiskey. “So tell me, Marcus, just how close are you to breaking that record?”


“Which one?” he asked. “Scores earned or keepers squashed?”


Draco grinned, but said, “Scores earned.”


Marcus thought it over. “Should be in the next game I think.” Frowning he asked, “Why do you care?”


Draco’s eyes flicked to his friend’s drink and back over to him. “A toast then?” Lifting his glass, he waited for Marcus to do the same. Once he did, he said, “Here’s to your new teeth as well as your upcoming goals. May it stand in the record books for a very long time.”


Marcus no sooner drank what was in the glass when everything seemed to go grey and out of sorts.


“I’m sorry,” Draco whispered. “I didn’t have a choice. It was a life debt. He saved me on the battlefield! What was I supposed to do? It was kill you or else.”


He looked from the glass to his friend, too shocked to do much more than fall to his knees. But before he could fall over completely the doors to the sitting room burst in and a troop of aurors ran into the room with Hermione in the lead.


She went straight over to Marcus, helping him lay down as she pulled out a vial and poured its contents into his mouth. “Drink it, Marcus,” she ordered him, even as she was looking over to Draco who was looking at her in shock. Once he did, she murmured, “You’re going to be okay.” His eyes closed, but he was still alive and would be for a good long time.


She stood up and went over to Draco. Hermione said nothing as she just stared at him.


“I haven’t anything to say,” he muttered.


“Aren’t you even curious?” she spoke to him for the first time. “Just a little?” She held out her hand, holding her thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart. “Not even a tiny bit?”


He swallowed thickly.


“You used a very powerful poison and he wasn’t dead not even as fast as he should have been,” she murmured. “You’re a potion master. Why didn’t you know something was a miss when he didn’t drop dead immediately?”


He swallowed thickly. “The only thing that could have kept him from dying is a…” Draco looked to her sharply. “A bezoar stone. But there’s no way you would have gotten it to him in time!”


“Among the many things that were wrong with Marcus Flint’s teeth, he had more than a few cavities.” Hermione moved so that her mouth was but an inch from his ear, “Can you guess what my parents used to fill the majority of them?” When she pulled back, he was gapping at her. “Who was the life debt with?”


“I’m not speaking until I speak to my solicitor!”


“Why are you protecting him?” she asked. “You had no choice in the matter! It was do as he asked or you died, Draco. You will more than likely be freed in a matter of hours for that charge alone.”


He weighed his options and blurted out the name of the man that had forced him into murder. Once he was taken away, Hermione sat down and waited.


“That’s all that’s going to happen to him?” Marcus asked. “A slap on the wrist?”


She looked over and said, “No, he’ll have to serve time for brewing an illegal potion—something that he had to have already brewed long before he was asked, by the way. He will also lose his potion mastery.” Hermione went over to him, helping him to sit up. “We need to get you straight over to St. Mungos. After which, there’s a man I have to go arrest.”


“All this…” He motioned to his teeth. “You weren’t doing this for me were you?”


“I won’t lie,” she answered as she helped him to his feet. “A lot of what I did to help you out was for work and that was definitely about you—about keeping you alive.”


“But why did he try to kill me?”


“I couldn’t say,” she muttered, as she tried to keep upright under the weight of his well muscled body leaning on her for support. “Merlin, but you weigh a ton!”


“Can I be there for it?” he asked her. “When you arrest him?”


“Only if you can charm the mediwitch into allowing you to do so,” she told him.


“I have new teeth, anything is possible.” They stopped and she looked at him as he tried to smile, but it came out as more of a snarl.


Wincing she said, “Why don’t I just sneak you out for it?”


***


“There is life after quidditch.” The words made the man go still. “One can survive without it.” Oliver Wood turned around slowly, closing his locker. “They’re sitting you out again, I take it?” Hermione walked into the room. “No surprise there. Your shoulder hasn’t been the same since that midair collision you were in a year ago.”


“What are you here for?” he asked harshly. “The locker room is for players only.”


“And since you’ve been out so often, all of your records have been falling one by one. I know because I have had an expert tutoring me in the sport and your place in it since this afternoon. All of those records broken, one by one. All that is except scores earned. That one must be your pride and joy. It’s the medal that you wear constantly to pick up women with—isn’t that right, Marcus?”


Oliver Wood went deathly pale at the sight of the muscular man making his way into the locker room, snarling at him. “That’s right. Practically stirs his drinks with it to pick up the groupies.”


“I have nothing but quidditch! It’s my life!” Oliver exclaimed. “And to have what I did torn away from me by-by this mountain troll! No!” he launched himself at Marcus, only to go straight through him and hit the lockers on the other side, thus knocking him out cold.


Aurors came rushing in and took him away, as Hermione went into the GM’s offices. Marcus was sitting there looking grim.


“He wanted me dead because of the stupid record?”


She sighed as she went over, sitting across from him. “His life is quidditch. His entire existence was tied to it. Women wanted him because of it, his father was proud of him because of it, and he couldn’t see himself without it. And in the record keeping comes a sort of immortality if you will.”


“But that’s so…” He couldn’t even think of the word for it.


“Marcus, think back to Hogwarts. Don’t you remember how he was?”


“Sure, he was nutters, but I didn’t think he was that far gone.”


“Oliver always did make his own best fanatic.”


***


Hermione ended up taking Marcus back over to St. Mungos. It was when he was settled back into his cot that he asked what he needed to.


“Was anything you said true?”


Sitting down in the chair next to him, she said, “Two other quidditch players had been murdered and as soon as we figured out that you might be next, they had to find
someone to go undercover.” She motioned to herself. “They picked me, saying I needed more experience as an auror in the field rather than just being a criminologist.”


“And that story about Ron Weasley?”


“That was a lie,” she said. “Based on a rumor about Ron that started about five years ago when his dear sweet wife wanted nothing more to do with the media and made Ron stop giving interviews.”


“So you weren’t engaged?”


“Merlin, no!” She looked at her watch. “He’s…”


“I am never late,” the smooth baritone of Severus Snape filled the air as he entered the room. “Mr. Flint.”


“Professor Snape,” Marcus said as he was sitting up straighter in the cot.


“No, no, stay put,” the older wizard insisted. “All went well I take it?”


“Exceedingly well,” Hermione told him. “Your idea for the bezoar fillings worked like a charm.”


“Of course they did,” he murmured, eyes narrowing. “Where is your ring?”


“Right here,” she said as she pulled out a necklace. She undid the chain and poured the wedding ring into Severus Snape’s hand.


“Can you put it back on me?” she asked.


“Of course,” he murmured, as he slipped it back onto her ring finger. “Right where it should be.” Severus kissed it for good measure. “There.”


“One last question before you leave,” Marcus said, pulling their attention back to him. “When you touched my hair…”


“I put a shielding charm on you,” she said with a grin. “Just in case.” She went over to him, kissing his forehead. “Good luck with the new teeth. Once you learn how to smile, you’ll be deadly with the women.”


Marcus watched as the two walked away. Severus wrapped his arm around her the moment that he thought no one was watching and kissed her hair. This small action gave him an odd hope. Smiling to himself, he lay back down and thought about life after quidditch.


THE END!

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I got this story into my head and I thought it would be a great one. Let me know how you like it. I NEED FEED BACK PEOPLE!!! Getting no reviews to date on that last story has really had my ego cramping. Anyway, here's to hoping you review. Have a spectacular day, people!