The Mystery Wife

Draco basked in the increasing attention, as he and Potter made their staggering, swaggering way through the streets of Hogsmeade. He'd cast himself firmly in the 'bad boy' role the day he came to Hogwarts, and he'd never looked back. But Potter was surprising him with the raging declaration of publicly inebriated stupidity. They came to the end of their song, howling with laughter, and Draco finally dared to ask.

"So, Potter...what the hell are you doing, anyway?"

"Coming of age," Potter slurred, still grinning fiercely, his eyes gleaming in challenge. "I really don't want to be expected to live an exemplary life. It's my life. I don't want to be anybody's example of shining heroism and clean living. I just want to be Harry, and do all the stupid shit we're supposed to be doing at this age. You know? I want to go to the pub with my friends, tie one on and sing stupid songs in the street on the way home. I want to go on a normal date with my girlfriend. I want to go cow tipping. I want to pose for naked pictures and shock the hell out of everyone. I want to be put on trial right next to your father, because I've robbed a bank and used two of the three Unforgivables, and I don't want to be let off just because I'm Harry Potter!"

His voice was getting louder as he went, and they were starting to attract really rather a good deal of attention, particularly from the Three Broomsticks crowd now listening out the window.

"Shhh!" Draco said to him, half-appalled, and half-laughing in spite of himself. "Are you barmy? Although I must say, my father's never robbed a bank. He's broken into the Ministry, of course, but then you did that, too." He eyed his companion, squinting against the blurriness, and added shrewdly, "And I'll bet you wouldn't want everyone who was there to stand trial, would you? Sometimes it's better to be let off."

Potter stopped short at that. "Hermione," he said a bit blearily. "And Ron. And Ginny."

"Oi! That's 'Arry Potter, that is!" someone crowed delightedly.

"I knew it was! Didn't I tell you it was, Marge?" said another.

Oh, buggering hell. That tore it.

Potter whirled awkwardly in the direction of the crowd pouring out of the Three Broomsticks to greet him, and he nearly tripped over his own feet. Draco lurched to catch him, none too steady himself, and the two of them had a rather perilous, gravity-defying moment of clutching at each other to hold each other up. Potter's momentum finally took both him and Draco arse over tea kettle, and the two of them wound up in an undignified, sprawling heap on the ground, Potter on top, looking down at Draco with a frown of bleary confusion.

It was then, of course, that the flash of a camera went off, swiftly followed by the sharp crack of Disapparition.

Draco suppressed the urge to bang his head on the ground. With the way his luck had been going, merciful unconsciousness would fail to rescue him from idiot Gryffindors.

"Well, there's page one taken care of," he muttered in an acid undertone. "Shame they didn't wait-- you might have decided to be really experimental and snog me. They could have sold the photos to Witch Weekly for page three, and for a hell of a lot more money. Will you kindly get OFF me, Potter?"

Potter blinked stupidly. "Right," he said. "We're going to the Shrieking Shack to finish getting drunk."

"No, you are not," said a dry, familiar voice, female this time. Sevanna.

Oh, shit.

"I really suggest that you get off me, now," Draco sighed, his drunken mood taking a sharp dip towards the morose. "You don't want to be in the hex radius." He pushed Potter to one side and sat up, looking around.

"Who are you?" Potter frowned up at her.

"The babysitter," she said acidly. "And Draco's Master, and thank you for utterly destroying his reputation along with your own, by the way. Both of you are in the middle of your NEWTs, and I cannot believe that even you, Potter, could be so criminally brainless and irresponsible. There are, need I remind you, still a number of Death Eaters at large, and they would love nothing better than to get their hands on either of you. As for the rest of you imbeciles, standing here in the street gawking at them like tourists, I will thank you to direct your attention to the tip of my wand."

She held it in the air, and it flared briefly white, and she shielded the view from both Potter and Draco.

"You will forget what you have seen tonight, go back to the bar and drink so heavily that the night's events will be a blur. You will forget me and the boys in the street entirely. Go."

They did, all of them, shambling off like zombies back to the Three Broomsticks.

"Professor Snape?" Potter blinked up at her.

"Prince, actually," she scowled. "Sevanna Prince. Severus Snape was my cousin, and, yes, I am well aware of the familial resemblance."

"Oh, my God..." Potter stared at her, his eyes taking her in almost desperately.

There was really quite a lot to take in, too. Tight black pants, knee-length boots with sensible low heels and a flowing black silk shirt that made her look like nothing so much as a pirate.

"Get up, Potter," she said crossly. "And you, Malfoy. And that," she spat, flicking her wand at the bottle of firewhisky on the ground and making it disappear, "will get you nowhere good. It is time to go back to Hogwarts, sleep this off and take your NEWTs tomorrow."

"We're not children, you know," Potter said mutinously.

She rolled her eyes. "Potter, kindly do not make more of an arse of yourself than you already have tonight. I appreciate the pressure of examinations, and for that matter I appreciate the stresses and difficulties of your life to date, more than you might imagine. But that does not mean I approve of this idiotic plan of going out and getting drunk in the middle of your exams. Has your life been hard, Potter? Unfair? Well, so has everyone else's. The only spot of good news is that you are still around to live it. You owe it to the dead to live it well. And you," she growled, rounding on Draco, "owe your fellow Slytherins better than this. They came back to Hogwarts for you, because you managed to convince them it was better for their futures to do so. You do not get to piss your own away with stunts like this one."

Draco glared up at her, eyes narrowed to cold, hostile slits. "I see. Everyone else is allowed to drink, sing, party, shag in public if it suits them, now that the war is over, but I am not one of their fortunate class. Nor is Potter. Of course, Mistress, I'll return to Hogwarts immediately."

He got up and dusted himself off. "Come on, Potter. I owe you a hangover cure, and I'm not making my irresponsible, inconsiderate, and immature behaviour worse by breaking my promises on top of it."

"No, you are not," Sevanna agreed hotly, walking along the path back to Hogwarts with them. Potter was still staggering, and she took one of his arms firmly and marched him along. "You are in the middle of your bloody NEWTs, Malfoy. We have worked hard for the last month to give you a chance of doing well at them. To give you a future, free and clear of the war. I have set my own life and research on hold and concentrated entirely on you and this. So, no, you do not get to drink and sing and party and shag in public until you set your quill down after the last bloody NEWT and earn your chance to graduate. And neither does Potter."

Potter punctuated that by dropping to his knees and vomiting spectacularly all over the road in front of them.

Oh, lovely. Thanks, Potter.

"Lightweight," Draco muttered, but stopped and saw to his drinking companion anyway, brusquely patting his back and keeping his hair out of his face. You really just couldn't take it out on someone who was throwing up. Too petty, even for him. Especially when he remembered Richard taking care of him, back in Yorkshire. He banished the mess with a flick of his wand and conjured a glass of water. "Come on, Potter. Not far to Hogwarts now. You can sleep it off in your own bed and dream about Weasley Girl."

"I'm sorry," Potter said sloppily, accepting the water. "This is really horrible... I just wanted a night out," he said, looking up at Sevanna with puppydog eyes.

"During exams?" she replied acidly.

"Because it was exams."

Sevanna pinched the bridge of her nose, sighed and started to pace. "And you had to drink quite that hard?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Her hand came sharply down from the bridge of her nose and cuffed him upside the head. "So did that."

"Ow."

"You're welcome. Feeling any better?"

"No."

Something buzzed toward them in the darkness, too loud to be a fly, sending a shockwave of magic with it.

"Protego!" Sevanna cried, launching herself between the boys and the path in front of them. A bolt of something hit her hastily raised Shield Charm and fizzled out around it, lighting it briefly against the night.

"Wait, what..." Potter blinked, confused and fumbling for his wand.

"Hush," she said sharply, listening for sounds in the darkness around them.

Draco spun around to cover her back, placing Potter between them. He wished he knew which of their group the attackers were shooting at, but Potter was the worst off of the three of them regardless. "Light?" he whispered urgently in Sevanna's direction. "Or sod it and run?"

"Portkey for you and Potter," she whispered back. "Go!"

Potter was gamely climbing to his feet, wand in hand. "Lumos solem!" he cried, and the road around them was suddenly as bright as day. Three attackers became immediately visible, one crouching in an alleyway, another in a doorway across the street, and a third in the open road directly in front of them. All three were heavily cloaked despite the June heat, and it was impossible to catch more than a shadowy glimpse of their faces.

And then the battle was on in earnest.

Sevanna slapped another Shield Charm over them, and Draco felt her hit him and Potter with a spell. He looked around wildly for Potter, and saw absolutely nothing there.

"Malfoy?" came Potter's panicked shout. "Malfoy, where are you?"

Sevanna was taking to the air, bloody flying, straight up, drawing off all the combined fire of their attackers. She was deflecting hexes and curses with contemptuous little flicks, dueling so impossibly fast that she was a blur.

A burst of white-hot energy erupted from her wand, spiraling and coalescing into an enormous basilisk, and she sent it at the man in the street in front of them with a sharp, shouted spell that sounded and felt for all the world like an explosion. The man erected a hasty Shield Charm, and the serpent blew it apart, opened its mouth impossibly wide and swallowed the man whole, everything, even his screams. It burrowed deep into the earth, leaving nothing behind at all.

"Malfoy!" Potter shouted again, and it was obvious to Draco at least that Sevanna had managed to turn the two of them invisible.

Draco made a wild guess at where Potter was and grabbed his arm.

"Quiet!" he hissed. "We're invisible. Stay close or we'll hit each other. Get the one in the doorway!"

He concentrated hard through the haze of alcohol, swearing under his breath, and shot a Blood Boiling Hex at the man in the mouth of the alley while his attention was on Sevanna. It was a Dark curse, and Draco hoped to hell nobody was watching this-- but not only did it hurt like hell, it utterly infuriated the victim, making them prone to mistakes and less likely to retreat.

Draco's wand hand shook as the man convulsed, a strangled scream escaping him. He didn't like this spell, especially not after this year-- there were plenty of creative uses for this curse, and Voldemort had known them all. But they couldn't let anyone get away. Not after having seen Sevanna fight.

Potter shot a Petrificus Totalus at the short, plump one in the doorway. It missed, and he fired off another as the man winged a desperate curse at Sevanna, the only one of the three of them he could actually see to attack. Potter's second Petrificus connected, miraculously, considering just how drunk he was, and the man keeled over, pitched down the stairs and landed roughly and stiffly on the sidewalk, face down.

Lights were coming on in windows, doorways were being thrown open, and wizards and witches were pouring out into the streets in a confused scramble, presumably to try to help or stop the fight. Sevanna hurled a last Body Bind at Draco's opponent and turned herself hastily invisible, and the man who'd been swallowed whole by the basilisk and buried alive in the street was regurgitated out of it in a burst, shaking and screaming.

A final body bind saw to him as well, and whatever Invisibility Spell Sevanna had placed on Draco and Potter was lifted.

Potter looked as if he badly wanted to throw up again, and Draco thought seriously about joining him.

"Oi, what's goin' on 'ere?" came a male voice from one of the doorways.

"We were attacked. Obviously," Draco replied in a tone he tried hard to make acid instead of slurred or shaky. He didn't lower his wand. "And since you're actually talking before you hex, I guess you're not one of them. We need someone to call the Ministry."

Potter straightened up again with an effort and nodded, and the inevitable rallying cry wasn't long in coming.

"It's 'Arry Potter! That's 'Arry Potter, that is!"

Draco glanced at Potter, and rolled his eyes.