The Mystery Wife

"Me, Da, I want ta go agait!" one of Richard Snape's little beasts howled. He had, Merlin help him, eight children, one of whom was a baby and seemed to do nothing but squall in his mother's arms, two of whom were twins and two or three years old at most, and the rest of whom ranged in age from five to seventeen.

Draco's age, though she certainly didn't act it, Draco thought.

They climbed all over the furniture, wrestled with each other, had spitting contests out in the backyard (which was so small it could have been carpeted without effort), shouted their wants and opinions at the tops of their lungs, and generally behaved in a way that would have gotten Draco Crucioed, back home.

Richard, in the middle of all that boisterous, cantankerous life, actually looked happy.

Sevanna didn't, but, then, she'd just come away from a situation in which she'd been forced to endure the constant company of hundreds of magical children. She kept scanning the windows and the door, no doubt plotting her escape.

Richard opened the back door again in response to the latest demand from the five-year-old...John, Draco thought he remembered, though how anyone kept them all straight was a bloody miracle...and the children climbed, toddled and rushed out the open door again. Margaret, Richard's wife, went with them to keep an eye on them, the baby finally asleep in her arms, and Sevanna hurried along after them all, looking, Draco thought, rather tense and haggard.

Richard packed a pipe and gave Draco one of his obviously patented piercing looks. "Smoke?" he asked laconically, offering it to Draco.

Draco shook his head, then rubbed it. His ears were still ringing. "I like the smell, but where I grew up, you don't smoke one of those until you've got a beard down to your waist."

Richard frowned, not having gotten all of that, but he'd figured out enough to take the pipe back and smoke it himself. "Tha' an' she gettin' on?" he asked, nodding in the direction of the back door.

"Fairly well, yes," Draco managed to drawl casually, with no more than a faint blush. "She seems to be willing to give me another chance, as her student," he was careful to add, "as long as I behave myself."

Richard snorted softly. "Tha bussed 'er, or she thee," he said knowledgeably. "'Tis written all over thee, plain as lipstick stains on t' collar."

Draco came a breath away from hauling the collar of that dreadful shirt up in panic and examining it for telltales. He managed not to, though. He hadn't spent a year under the even sharper and considerably more inimical eye of the Dark Lord for nothing.

But he couldn't quite stop the question from escaping. "What makes you think so?" And is it just me that's making you think so? Probably. Damn, damn, damn...

Richard's smile was knowing, the twinkle in the blue eyes suddenly uncomfortably reminiscent of Albus Dumbledore.

"Tha'rt lookin' at nothin' but 'er," he nodded. "An' she is carefully not lookin' at thee, as if not to tempt 'erself. Ah, yes, she is bein' noble an' tosh, she is. Either she thinks tha'rt too good for 'er, bein' an obvious gent o' quality, or she thinks that she may na' sith tha'rt 'er student. Or else that tha'rt not Lily Evans Potter. She wast ever a gawby about that."

"Lily Evans Po--" Draco yelped, and stopped so abruptly that he nearly hurt himself.

The girl. The red-haired girl in the photograph that didn't move.

The eyes.

Green. Even in the midst of screaming her head off. Big, pretty eyes, green as grass. He'd seen them before.

Usually narrowed in a blistering glare, admittedly. Or worse, giving him that cool, utterly fucking maddening 'I am so much better a person than you, Malfoy, that you don't even have the right to breathe around me' look. But he'd seen them.

"Holy buggering hell," he muttered blankly. "Well. That explains a lot."

"Aye?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "You have no idea. He can't stand Potter, but he never did anything about it, not even when Potter was really bloody asking for it. I could never figure out why not. That must have been why."

"Sev is sworn to look after the boy. The old gaffer up at't school, Albus Dumbledore, would fain 'ave it so. Sev could never see t'boy without rememberin' James Potter. An' that were bitter, that I knew. James Potter. There were a real prick; yer boy 'Arry is a mere shadow, an' more like 'is sainted mum from aught I can tell."

Draco turned white and opened his mouth. He closed it again with a snap. The bastard had saved his life. And he'd killed the Dark Lord, which by then had come as an intense relief.

There were certain things, however, that were never, ever going to change. He'd taken his wand, too. Both of them.

"Well, I still hate him," he muttered, scrunching down rebelliously in his seat. "Everybody treats him like he's so bloody special, and he's a conceited, holier-than-thou, hypocritical prat."

One of Richard's eyebrows climbed nearly into his silvering hairline. "Tha'rt exactly like Sev an' James Potter," he said.

Draco looked up in... not exactly surprise, but certainly interest.

"So he's going to scarper off with the girl I fancy, then?" he drawled. His eyes flicked at the door to the postage stamp of a backyard, and the corner of his mouth quirked. "Hmm. Somehow, I don't think it's likely."

Richard's lips twitched in barely contained amusement as he watched those eyes. "I was thinkin' more like, there are some enemies dearer ta thee than friends, bound ta thee by these life debts you wizards are allus goin' on about. Sev owed James Potter a life debt. An' then James an' Lily died, an' Sev transferred it over to the son. An' even after 'e'd managed to repay it by keepin' the little wanker fallin' off 'is broom, 'e still went on as if the life debt was there. Did a better job of it than Dumbledore, by the sound of it; Dumbledore allus seemed a little too content ta let the boy get 'imself in trouble. Drove Sev up a tree. The Potter boy was supposed ta be the one t' defeat Voldemort, an' Sev wanted 'im trained proper, an' Dumbledore never allowed it. No idea why. Anyway, seems like the boy worked it out in the end."

Draco nodded stiffly. "He did. I do owe him a life debt, actually. How the hell did you know?"

"I know what Sev looked like whenever 'e ranted about James Potter. T' same guilty defiance. I did naught but guess."

"I hate it," Draco muttered, well aware that there was a look of guilty defiance on his face. It didn't help his mood any. "We've been enemies since we got on the bloody train, first year. I did everything I could, to get even. My stupid friend was even the one who set fire to the room, trying to get him. I don't know why he bothered."

Richard let out a low whistle. "An' young Potter did save thee from this fire?"

Draco scrunched down further in his chair. "Yeah. I kept telling them no, but they wouldn't..." He blinked hard against the stinging in his eyes. "So, now I owe Potter my life. After everything that's happened in the last seven years, I almost think I'd rather be dead, except I'm not quite that dumb." His head snapped up suddenly, and he fixed Richard with a suspicious glare. "And if you suddenly think now that because he saved my life it cancels out everything else about him and makes him some sort of fucking saint, you can go to hell."

Richard frowned as he parsed that. "There are no saints, boy. Just men. Dinna' think 'im mardy or goodly without thinkin' yerself the same. An' tha dost not forgive 'im for savin' thee, tha shalt end like Severus, nursin' bitter grudges twenty years gone."

The tousled black head tilted, as Draco considered that. "No, you know, I can forgive him for saving my life. I just don't see that I have to like everything else he's ever bloody done, just because I'm grateful he did that. I wouldn't admit it was him when the Death Eaters had him and weren't sure, and I could have been killed for that, but nobody's out there thinking I'm a saint--least of all, him. So thank you, Harry Potter. I am deeply grateful to be alive. You're still a prat."

Draco found himself wreathed in pipe smoke. The silence lengthened between them, not uncomfortable, exactly. At least, it wouldn't have been if Draco's thoughts had been more cheerful.

He leaped out of his seat and went pacing around the room. "I don't even know why I'm telling you any of this," he muttered to himself. "You probably don't even know half of the context, and I shouldn't bloody tell you if you did. I think I liked drinking until I threw up better."

"Tha' maun tell someone. Why not a rowpy old codger like me? Every man maun unpack 'imself ta someone. E'en Severus."

"Who does Severus unpack himself to?" Draco asked, pausing in his restless and chaotic path around his chair. A tiny smile tugged at his mouth. "Probably you, too."

"Sometime," Richard shrugged. "There's much 'e couldna' afford to tell me nor anyone, over the years. 'E confided bits in me, an' bits in Dumbledore, but mostly 'e's kept his own counsel. A lonely path o'er the cold mountain, that."

"Yeah," Draco murmured, looking at the door to the backyard. "He always acted like that was exactly how he wanted things and people would only annoy him, but I always wondered."

"The school were good for 'im, I think. Better than 'e ever let on. 'E 'ad children, there, an' if anyone were ever meant to 'ave children, it were Severus."

Draco's borrowed brown eyes returned to stare at Richard, in a fashion that suggested Richard had just claimed to be a small pink-clad girl whose fondest dream was to play Cinderella in a performance of the Russian Ballet.

"He hates children!"

Richard threw back his head and laughed. "So tha' thinkst. So 'e thinks, anall. An' yet sitha 'ow 'e protects ye all, especially 'is own Slytherins. 'E played guardian an' Da to 'em all for nigh on twenty years. When tha wert troubled or 'urt, 'oo was the first there? Not Dumbledore. 'Twas Severus more oft than not, I'll wager."

"More oft than not?" Draco snorted. "Always. Only. Dumbledore couldn't be arsed with the Slytherins, and everyone on his staff followed suit. Everyone but Professor Snape."

The Yorkshireman's eyes glinted, hard and approvingly, and he nodded. "'E...she...is the same with my own. She's agait mindin' 'em now, givin' me the chance to smoke my pipe an' blether wi' thee. An' so perhaps she is guardin' thee as well in this. Tha needst t' unpack. She knows it. She feels responsible for it, clear as day."

"She shouldn't. He--she--tried to tell me to stay out of it. He tried to take it on himself, and I told him off. He did anyway, in the end." Draco looked down at the floor. "The murder he's done? He didn't want to. He did it so I didn't have to."

Richard sucked in a sharp breath, and let it out slowly, thinking. "Protecting 'is own. 'Tis 'is weakness. An' perhaps the finest thing about 'im. 'Er. Whatever. 'Er. She'll make a good woman. She 'as the temper for it, an' the sharp tongue, an' a parental streak the size of a mountain. Voldemort didn't miss it, clearly, any more than Dumbledore did. 'An Sev tryin ta' tapdance between the two, when neither of 'em deserved the effort in me 'umble opinion. It's a fierce thing, Sev's loyalty. An' what of thee, youngun, dost tha deserve it?"

Draco snorted a laugh, but the sound was cracked and broken and had nothing resembling mirth in it.

"No," he said baldly. "The only decent thing I've done in the last two years was punching somebody in the face for hitting your sister, and I didn't even get to finish the job. Everything else has been either horrible or pathetic. The Malfoys are rotters. We're good at it. Except that I'm not even good at it. She should dump me on the doorstep of the Ministry."

It took Richard a bit of time to parse that.

"She willna," he said at last, those eyes piercing, over his pipe. He took a long drag and blew a wreath over his own head. "Y'are a pair, the two o' ye. I'll tell thee summat I've learned. Tha'rt not yet eighteen. The mistakes tha'st made, an, aye, tha'st made 'em, as 'ave we all...they can still be reclaimed, at thine age. But dinna be Severus. Forgive thissen. Sooner rather than later, or worse, not at all."

"You really don't want to know why I shouldn't forgive myself too easily," Draco replied, rather bleakly, sitting back down in his chair. "And I really don't want to tell you. You'd throw me out of your house."

Another sedate puff on his pipe wreathed the older man in smoke again. "Not if tha didst murder, an' many times o'er. Tha'rt under the wing of Severus, an' she would not 'ave ta'en thee an' she judged thee unworthy."

Draco tried to be cynical about that. Well, you see, my parents and I owe her, so she came to collect. And she's bound by an Unbreakable Vow to protect me. She has to take me in. This way, at least, she gets three years of service out of me.

But it didn't wash. If Professor Snape hadn't meant to protect him all along, he wouldn't have taken a Vow like that. Nobody sane would. Not even confronted with his aunt Bellatrix. Unlike nearly everyone else on the planet, he'd never seemed particularly afraid of her.

It didn't help when you added that almost shame-faced apology for kissing him, either. Oh, she got three years of service out of him, alright. Except that she'd sworn never to demand the most traditional kind. Which basically put his maximum amount of service at the level of permanent detention. Professor Snape could have stayed at Hogwarts and had that.

Eliminating cynicism left Draco back at the state of total bewilderment and occasional panic he'd been in since Professor Snape had come through the Floo.

"I don't know why!" he exclaimed. "Either she was really on Dumbledore's side, and she must hate everything I've done, or she wasn't, and she must think I'm the Death Eater version of Neville Longbottom!"

Richard let out a soft, amused breath. "That ain't my story t' tell, 'tis 'ers. I'll let 'er do it in 'er own time, but honestly, lad, an' tha canst not guess by now which side she favored..."

He shook his head, that good-natured amusement etching broad furrows in his cheeks and around his eyes. The life of a Yorkshire mill worker had clearly aged him, but those were the lines of a man who smiled and laughed often.

"She was on Dumbledore's side," Draco sighed. "I'm not an idiot, I've just been acting like one for the last two years. Brilliant. So I'm despised, rather than thought hopelessly incompetent. That's some comfort, I suppose. A really minor one."

"An' she despised thee, would she saddle 'erself with thee, now she is free?" Richard drawled, sounding suddenly more like the Professor Snape Draco remembered. "She wouldna, that I can tell thee plain. She likes thee, lad. I would say she more'n likes thee, judging by that guilty martyred look of 'ers, an' tha'rt stuck on 'er as well. Either ye can pine after one another for the next three year, or ye can do aught about it. She's tetchy in 'er honor, an' well used ta pinin' after the unattainable. Tha wilt 'ave ta change 'er mind, lad, an' woo 'er proper, if tha'st the sense God gave a bummel-clock."

"D'you think flowers and chocolates and ridiculous compliments would work on her?" Draco retorted, raking both hands into his hair and destroying what little pretense of style was left to it. "You know, what with me being used to dealing with sixteen-year-old girls when I last had attention to spare for that sort of thing, most of whom giggled a lot and threw themselves at me like they were bludgers? Merlin, I'm going to look like an idiot...!"

"An' tha'rt playin' for the heart, boy, 'tis the way of it t' look an idiot," Richard said sagely, and with a distinct and maddening lack of sympathy, as soon as he'd parsed most of Draco's words. "'Ast not done braver things besides? 'Ast not survived a war an' a Dark Lord, then? Tha'rt bonney; tha'lt suss out a way."

"A way to do what?" That melting dark voice startled them both as Sevanna, Margaret and the rest of the family came barreling back into the house. Draco felt himself going red.

"Whisht, a way t' survive thy maungy company f'r three long year," Richard teased, his eyes dancing. That, of course, set the two of them off on one of their absolutely bloody incomprehensible sparring matches, all rolling Rs and funny words and musical lilt.

It also, mercifully, let Draco off the hook.