Title: Rubies that are his eyes
Date: October 23, 2005
Challenge # 36 from Quiet Ones
Notes: The story is a bit heavy on the wacky. It’s got a certain flavor of Halloween.
Disclaimer: these characters and Potter-verse belong to Rowlings.
Words: 554
Hermione, dreaming, was reliving the scares, the happiness, and the more banal moments of the last
week.
“Those were rubies which are his eyes” said Ronald Malfoy, taking Hermione’s hand and leading her to
the cauldron which was a coffin. In it a banshee with the face of Draco perched, inhaling as if he was about
to howl.
“Please don’t scream,” said Hermione. “I’ll spill my drink.”
“What would you give me?” asked the banshee. “Will you visit?”
“I don’t want to spill my drink again,” replied the young woman, now holding her pregnant
belly.
“Don’t worry. I’m here to make sure that won’t happen,” said the banshee, crawling from the well on
limbs long and jointed like a spider. Beyond Hermione could see Draco pouring fire out of his wine glass into
an urn.
“Don’t worry,” the banshee said again, its face and voice like Draco’s. But when it extended its claw
like hand to rest cold on Hermione’s belly, she woke in frigid terror.
“What is it?” asked Draco, instantly awake.
Hermione, best she could, told her husband her dream, shivering as his warm hand lay on her belly where
the bone cold Banshee’s had been.
“I’ll kill Lucius for spilling the old rumors and scaring you,” he groused.
“But is it true?” she asked.
“Banshees aren’t known for deceit. So either some banshee cousin or ancestor of mine has told you that
you and your child are under his protection, in which case you are, or it’s a dream. I just don’t see the
problem.”
“He scared me,” she said sheepishly.
“It will work out, Mrs. Malfoy,” he said. He tucked the blanket around his wife and propped himself up
and watched her fall asleep. It didn’t take long.
When Hermione had fallen asleep, Draco padded from bed to his workshop. There he marked the floor and
left within those markings an offering to the ancestor spirits on his own dinner plate. Tonight he put out two
rubies, the size of eyes.
Soon, the bodkin and baby would both be born. Though their help was appreciated, Draco wished the
cousins would stop trying to reassure Hermione. His father had laughed when Draco had told him. The ancestors
had never tried to contact Narcissa.
An alarming shadow peeled itself out of a corner, entering the circle, and it swallowed the rubies. As
it folded and unfolded limbs, slowly leaving, Draco asked why they were not communicating through the regular
methods.
“We like the mother,” said the banshee.
“Then stop scaring her,” returned Draco. “Communicate with me in the standard ways.”
“Tell her we are safe. Then she won’t be scared,” answered the cousin, fading into the night.
Draco took the dish back to the kitchen, washed up, and returned to bed. He wondered when would be a
good time to tell Hermione that their child was going to have a soul double. While his wife lay oblivious in a
bed carved with dragons, and knowing himself that he’d already begun carving firebirds on his son’s cradle,
Draco knew his answer: never.
“Will muggles also demand soul copies of our descendants?” Draco wondered, sarcastically.
“Not if the child was willing to live in both worlds,” replied a voice in Draco’s head.
Draco relaxed beneath the blanket, ignored the voice, and fell comfortably asleep.
finis.
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