The Mystery Wife

Sevanna joined them that evening for dinner at Le Procope, a wonderful old restaurant in the Muggle Quartier Latin that had played host to the likes of Voltaire, Napoleon, Diderot, Marat and Benjamin Franklin in bygone days. They had a small room all to themselves on the upper story, filled with antique baroque furnishings and old paintings, and cigar smoke, courtesy of Lucius and Sevanna.

"Care for one, Draco?" Lucius drawled, offering him one of the dark Cuban cigars.

Draco's eyes flitted to Sevanna, and his mouth quirked at one corner, remembering the adventures in cigarette-smoking on their first day out.

"Yes, thank you," he drawled. "I think I'm becoming rather attached to this vice, actually."

"Since when have you picked it up in the first place?" his father asked him archly, handing him a cigar and lighting it for him. "I've never known you to smoke before."

"Sevanna's corrupting me," some imp of mischief prompted Draco to reply. Let her have some of the fun of fighting off his parents and their matchmaking. Draco never had been the sort to suffer silently. Or alone.

"About time," Lucius muttered. "Pity it only extends to smoking."

Sevanna rolled her eyes heavenward. "One would think for all the world you actually wanted your precious son and heir tainted by a halfblood old enough to be his mother."

"You are also someone to whom all of us owe a tremendous debt," said Narcissa. "And you are giving Draco no proper way to repay his own. If anything, his debt to you is only deepening now that he's serving as your apprentice."

"I don't see that at all," Sevanna said stubbornly, taking another puff of her cigar. "I may be helping him get through his NEWTs and graduation, but after that, believe me, he's going to be working like a house elf, and the salary of an Apprentice is not a generous one. He'll have little enough reason to think himself indebted to me when we're brewing twelve potions at the same time, late into the night."

"That's not all you should be doing late into the night," Lucius drawled. "Come now, Sevanna. Draco is quite good looking, you're obviously attracted, and I assure you, everyone around you already thinks you have a properly consummated Master/Apprentice relationship. You might as well, really. Besides, this odd carrying on about not taking advantage of him flies in the face of Wizarding traditions older than your Hogwarts."

"Not my Hogwarts anymore."

"Nevertheless. Step up, man. Woman. Whatever. Do your duty by my son. You're supposed to be teaching him a damned sight more than potions."

Sevanna leaned back in her chair, took another puff of her cigar and regarded Lucius coolly. "Don't you suppose we've all had enough of whoring ourselves? Do you not, for God's sake, want something better for your son than that?"

Before anyone could start yelling or firing off hexes, the cake arrived.

"Happy birthday to you," Narcissa sang, rather forlornly, as no one joined her.

Draco broke up in laughter. Rather shaky laughter, but laughter. He leaned across and kissed Narcissa on the cheek.

"Thank you, Mother," he smiled at her. "Who wants cake? I'm eighteen. Everyone can stop bickering, eat cake, and bloody celebrate for fifteen minutes."

There was a brief, slightly stilted pause while Draco blew out the candles and cut the cake, and Sevanna was the one to finally break it with a peace offering.

"I should take you to the single most peaceful spot in the city, as you're here and it's Draco's birthday," she said. "You simply can't see Paris without it."

"The Eiffel Tower?" Lucius inquired ironically.

"Just so."

"Sev...anna, you must be joking," Lucius sputtered. "It will be crawling with Muggle tourists! Literally!"

"Not the spot I have in mind. Trust me."

It went without saying that Lucius did, in spite of years of plotting against him in the Dark Lord's service. So, as soon as cake and coffee were finished and the bill was paid, it was out into the Parisian night, away in a Parisian Muggle cab, which got a good many sniffs and funny looks from Lucius and Narcissa, and back out again to stand in longish lines and crowded elevators with distinctly non-Parisian Muggles.

"You're sure this was a good idea, Sever...anna?" Lucius drawled, his fingers toying idly with his wand as a plump, fidgety Muggle boy continued to crowd into his elevator space.

"Wait for it," Sevanna drawled.

She led them to a restaurant called Altitude 95, and rather than leading them up the curving metal stairs and into the restaurant, she led them to a window table in the very back of the downstairs bar. The tables were candlelit, and right up against an enormous bay window looking out over the Seine and the Trocadero.

Better still, all the buzz and noise was coming from the restaurant upstairs. Down here, there was no one but them and the wait staff at the bar. It was rather like having their own private restaurant, right in the Eiffel Tower.

Outside the enormous windows, Paris stretched out before them like an indolent courtesan, self-satisfied and beautiful, and the Muggle lights glittered like her diamonds in the darkness.

"One of my favorite spots on this earth," Sevanna smiled, her own self-satisfaction quite evident. "I've been saving it for tonight."

Draco's gaze was torn away from the view. He looked at Sevanna for a moment in surprise, and then a smile stole onto his face, unstoppable as sunlight and just as warming.

"Thank you," he murmured. If his parents hadn't been sitting right there, he rather thought he would have kissed her. And not really cared much about the hexing he'd undoubtedly have received afterwards.

Her own answering smile seemed to be unconscious reflex, quickly stifled once she realized she was doing it.

"Will you people kindly get a room?" Lucius asked in pure exasperation. "Oh, wait, you already have one. In point of fact, you have a house."

"And here I thought you wanted me to take advantage of Draco's position and innocence," Sevanna drawled.

"Yes," Lucius said emphatically. "I do."

"Have you ever tried kir?" Sevanna asked, rising gracefully from her seat. "It's one more thing you shouldn't leave Paris without trying. I'll just go take the bartender's pulse, and see if I can't get us one of their fruit and cheese platters while I'm at it."

She fled with the last vestige of her dignity, her black skirts snapping in her wake.

"Will you please," Draco drawled once she was out of earshot, banging his forehead lightly on the table for emphasis between words, "stop... helping!"

"Why?" Lucius asked. "It's evident you want each other, and you simply need a little nudge in the right direction."

"Your father and I just want to see you happy, darling," Narcissa agreed.

This was utterly surreal, Draco thought.

"I hope to GOD some ancient, half-deaf, horrible aunt sat there in the parlor and made rude comments like 'What's wrong with the boy? Why doesn't he kiss her already?!' when you were courting Mother," he muttered acidly, leaving his forehead on the table. It was cool and soothing and didn't have any opinions on who he should be shagging. He liked this table.

"Courting?" Narcissa murmured after a brief pause. "Is that what you're doing, darling?"

"No! It's just the closest thing I can think of as retroactive revenge!"

Lucius and Narcissa glanced at each other, visibly confused.

"We can't help you if we don't know what you want, darling," said Narcissa. "Are you just looking to fulfill the standard Master/Apprentice contract, or are you looking for an actual relationship?"

They glanced at one another again, one of those glances filled with Marital Communication and Slytherin Calculation.

Merlin help him. Merlin and Morrigan and Badh fucking help him.

"What I want is not to be embarrassed in front of my Master," Draco insisted. "I want him not to be embarrassed either. He-- she-- said she wasn't going to. She already has to look after my best interests, for as long as both of us live, and it'll be more binding than any decades-old sexual relationship ever would be when both people have moved on. Can't she just teach me?"

"Here we are," Sevanna said with rather forced cheer as she returned with a tray sporting four champagne glasses and a platter of fruit and cheese. Rescue!

"Kir," Draco said, bolting upright. "I want to try kir. What is kir, anyway?"

Lecture, please, for the love of Merlin, before my parents can talk anymore. I like to listen to you lecturing anyway.

Sevanna, mercifully, obliged. "These are kirs royals," she said, handing them around. "Champagne with creme de cassis. Made with sparkling wine instead of champagne, these would be kirs pétillants. Made with red wine, cardinals." She went on and on, explaining the finer points of kir imperial, kir normand, kir breton and cidre royal, with the obvious endgame in mind of both distracting and boring her captive audience.

It worked.

"These are enchanting, Sevanna!" Narcissa pronounced graciously as soon as the lecture came to a close. "And what a charming spot you've selected for us! So perfect for Draco's birthday!"

"I know what else would be perfect for Draco's birthday," Lucius murmured innocently, looking out the window.

"Across the river," Sevanna said blithely, "you can see the Trocadero, also known as the Palais de Chaillot."

"Oh, look, what a lovely boat!" Narcissa said helpfully, pointing at one of the cruise boats moving slowly down the Seine.

"Everything's lovely here," Draco agreed, falling in rather desperately with the new plan, which seemed to be 'ignore Lucius if he's talking about sex'. Which Draco was more than happy to do in the first place, because this was his father, and frankly, ewwwww... "Paris is the most beautiful city... I actually like how our quarter threads through the Muggle sections."

"So, out of curiosity," said Lucius, idly considering his fingernails, "how does the Vow continue to work after the apprenticeship is served and done?"

"I will have to stay reasonably close to Draco, as you perfectly well know," said Sevanna. "It might be easiest if we were to become research partners after Draco has attained his Mastery."

Her eyes flicked to Draco, visibly assessing his reaction to that.

"That'd... be... I think I'd like that," Draco said after a moment. He gave Sevanna a wry smirk. "Provided you think you can train me up enough that I'd be worth something as a research partner, of course."

She actually smiled at that. "I do," she said.

Narcissa 'awwed' and caught a picture of the two of them.

Draco made a mental note to wheedle a copy of that picture out of his mother. In private. Away from his father.

"Does it not strike anyone that this would all be easier if you were married?" Lucius asked, as if it were the most practical suggestion in the world and they were fools not to have thought of it themselves.

Draco froze, then lowered his glass very carefully to the tabletop. "Are you proposing to her for me?" he drawled coolly, his face gone white, eyes narrowing. "Do you plan to pull up a chair on our wedding night, as well, and offer pointers? Must get her pregnant as soon as possible, after all. The next generation of Malfoys is at stake. And God knows I'd probably do it wrong."

"Are you capable of children, in your new body, or would it have to be a Weave child?" Lucius asked Sevanna curiously.

"Lucius," Sevanna drawled, "I trust you have not forgotten that my father was a Muggle, and a Yorkshire mill worker at that?"

"A minor inconvenience, at this point. Draco's father, to wit, me, has done time in Azkaban and been a flagrantly infamous Death Eater."

"So have I. Both."

"There you are, then, you'll fit right in."

"Lucius, I do not understand you at all. Shouldn't you be setting Draco up with a blonde, pretty pureblood girl his own age? Better still, shouldn't we all be letting him make this decision for himself? I am not exactly any eighteen-year-old's idea of the perfect coming-of-age birthday gift."

An alarmingly large percentage of Draco's mind was in immediate and violent disagreement with this statement, which sent a very visible blush flaming across his pale face.

The rest of him was humilated and angry, but he'd been that for the last five minutes. He snatched up his glass again and downed the rest of his kir.

"If I'd happened to think you were the perfect gift, do you think the negotiations would have left me in any mood to unwrap it?" he observed acidly, and not incidentally, evasively. "I think I'll join a monastery. If I can find one that won't set me on fire as I walk through the door."

"That would be rather hellishly inconvenient," Sevanna said dryly, "as I would have to come with you, and my chances of becoming a man again for more than an hour at a time are absolutely nil."

"How is that going, by the way?" Lucius asked. "It must be very strange, having to learn to live as a woman."

"So far, it hasn't been too terribly different," she shrugged. "In truth, I try to think about it as little as possible. I'm alive, and I'm not in Azkaban, and I have a chance to start over. If I have to do it as a woman, well, billions of women seem to manage it."

"If you need any help, Sevanna, you have only to ask," said Narcissa.

"Thank you," Sevanna nodded. "As you're one of only two women in the world still talking to me, I may well ask for pointers."

What they all got after that was an educational and positively hair-raising discussion on the fine points of various magical tampons, pads and depilatories, delivered by Draco's mother with casual and alarming frankness.

"The worst thing in the world is waking up during a period having utterly destroyed your own sheets, if you take my meaning," she was chattering on amiably. "They're ever so expensive, after all, and all that menstrual blood..."

Draco winced, shuddered, and outright fled to the bar. He eyed the range of bottles.

"Deux de tout, s'il vous plait," he told the bartender dryly, and not entirely in jest. "Je pense que je deviendrai bien bourré."

Lucius joined him, to his consternation. "I'll have what he's having," he told the bartender.

The bartender, for his part, looked at them both as though they were insane. "You theenk you weel be butter?" he asked. "An' you want to be buttered, too?"

"Scotch," said Lucius. "Two."

That, the bartender understood, at least. He fixed them up with two scotches on the rocks, and Lucius downed one with a neat and practiced flick of the wrist.

"So, truly, you're well?" he asked Draco. "Living with Sevanna, and your studies, they're going well?"

Draco downed his own drink in frustration, and then nearly strangled himself, keeping an explosion of coughing suppressed. Except that he really would have rather died than cough, just at that moment.

"My studies are going well, yes," Draco choked out when he could breathe again. "If I don't sleep between now and then, I think I might survive my NEWTs."

"If you don't sleep between now and then, you'll fall asleep in the middle of your NEWTs. You're sure you want to put yourself through it this year? There's always next year..."

"No," Draco said stubbornly. "This year. I'm probably the only Slytherin that'll go back at all. The other three Houses don't get to sit there at their stupid Leaving Feast and be smug about getting rid of us, just like they've always wanted."

"So you'll be staying for the Leaving Feast? That may not be entirely wise... you will forever be, in their minds, the boy who let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. And you will not even have the inept but massive Crabbe or Goyle to back you up. You should be able to get away with sitting the exams, if we pull a few careful strings, but the Feast... it would be dangerous. More dangerous than it would be for me to walk down Diagon Alley, as you cannot precisely Disapparate if the other children turn on you."

Draco looked miserably down at his empty glass, and gestured to the bartender for another. "Well, they'll get to be smug at the Feast, then. But I'm going to take my NEWTs. I'm getting my life back in that much order, anyway."

His father nodded and clapped a hand on his shoulder wordlessly. There didn't seem to be much more to say. We failed, but we survived, for better or worse. Now, we move on.