Celestial Being

Draco sang softly to Teddy while he watched the little boy drink his milk. “Five green dragons making such a roar, one danced away and then there were four…” Teddy snuggled up to him, half asleep already. Being asked to cover for Angie this morning was one of those delightful surprises Draco didn’t expect to get anymore. “Four green dragons dancing 'round a tree, one danced away and then there were three.” Draco brushed his hands through Teddy’s hair. It was a bit odd how sweaty he was, they hadn’t been playing that hard. “Three green dragons dancin' round you, one danced away and then there were two.” Draco scooped Teddy up and carried him over to his bed, laying him down gently. He began to tuck a blanket around the toddler. “Two green dragons dancing in the sun, one danced away and then there was one,” Teddy rolled over onto his stomach, snuggling into a pillow and out from under his blanket, the shifting pulling up the back of his shirt a little. Draco saw something peculiar and reached for it. “One green dragon having lots of fun,” under the shirt was a strange rash, snaking over Teddy’s lower back. Draco lost the words to the song. It was just as well, the boy was already asleep. The silence hung over Draco for a long moment while he stared at the child. Then Draco kissed him on the head and whispered, “sleep well, Edward,” and left the room.

Draco was frowning something fierce as he walked down the stairs. He wasn’t sure where he was walking, but he stopped by the drawing room, then the library, then the family dining room, which he reached just as Kreacher opened the doorway to the stairs that led to the kitchens.

Draco couldn’t recall a time he’d seen Kreacher leave the kitchens voluntarily. He swore the man had a secret sleeping chamber down there, instead of on the fourth floor with the other servants.

“Master Draco,” Kreacher said, his brows were furrowed more than normal and he wore a particular frown. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but hesitated.

“I was looking for Aunt Andromeda,” Draco said, realizing it was true as he spoke it.

Kreacher nodded. “Yes, I think that’s for the best.”

This time, when they climbed the stairs together Kreacher didn’t put on any airs about the trouble. He climbed as quickly as Draco.

Draco’s mother was already in Andromeda’s study when the pair arrived. Narcissa was wringing her hands and staring at her feet while Andromeda sat behind her imposing desk and scowled. The scowl deepened when Draco didn’t hesitate to enter the room without invitation. Then her eyes flickered to Kreacher and her expression switched to surprise.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Andromeda demanded.

Kreacher glanced at Narcissa and Draco, but both instinctively kept their mouths shut. Narcissa likely out of wisdom, and Draco because he figured his mother was more likely to tell him what she was fighting with her sister about if he was on good behavior.

“The lads are sick,” Kreacher said finally.

“Which lads?” Andromeda asked.

Kreacher hesitated again as he had downstairs. This time he looked only at Narcissa. Narcissa felt him staring and looked up from the floor to meet his gaze. A dozen microexpressions made up of eyebrow and lip twitches revealed a conversation Draco could not interpret. Finally, Kreacher said, “all of them.”

“All of them?” Andromeda and Narcissa said together, only in completely different tones.

“How could this be?” Andromeda asked even as Narcissa said, “It’s moving so quickly!”

“What’s going on?” Draco asked sharply.

“I told you, Andy, the dragon pox is here,” Narcissa insisted.

“Dragon pox?” Draco gasped, even as his aunt shook her head.

“There hasn’t been dragon pox in the kingdom for close to twenty years!” Andromeda countered.

“And not for twenty before that, but perhaps that just means it’s time,” Kreacher said gruffly.

Draco was looking from one person to another, feeling too young as he saw all the people he thought of as adults so worried. “How could all the footmen have it? They didn’t even see the king,” Draco asked.

“What does the king have to do with it?” Andromeda snapped, turning her anger to Draco.

Draco flinched at her glare. “Oh,” he stuttered, “he was just sick, when he was here. I saw a rash.”

“On the king?” Narcissa said in horror. She covered her mouth with both hands.

“Calm down, Cissi, the king does not have dragon pox,” Andromeda said, all exasperation.

Narcissa, Draco and Kreacher all just stared at her. They let the silence stretch long and hard until it hung so oppressively even Andromeda buckled.

“Like Draco said,” Andromeda kept trying to argue. “If the king brought dragon pox, how could the footmen all be sick when the three of us aren’t?” she gestured to her sister and nephew.

“They must have got it first, from somewhere else,” Narcissa said, growing paler as she considered that reality. If there were two different entry points into the house, both noble and servant, that meant the pox had spread far.

Andromeda was still shaking her head, not so much in disbelief as with a determination that had been necessary to overcome countless obstacles in the past and couldn’t be given up on now. “It can’t be. You’re worried and jumping to conclusions. Even if it was the pox, there’s no reason to get worked up and cause a panic. You must stop overreacting.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. He stared at Andromeda and her alone even as he said. “Mother, why don’t you be so kind as to check in on everyone and see how they’re feeling. Maybe bring around a pot of ginger tea.” He saw when Andromeda’s eye twitched in frustration that he was dismissing Narcissa from the conversation. Narcissa didn’t speak, she just took the opportunity Draco presented and fled the room.

Andromeda opened her mouth to snap something at Draco but he spoke before she could, and then spoke louder over her when she tried to interrupt. “Kreacher, go to the grocer and see if there is anything non-perishable we can keep on hand. Something easy to prepare on your own.”

“See here, young man, you cannot order my servants-” Andromeda was ranting.

Draco was in the habit of lounging and slouching in ways that made him look sloppy and small, a tactic that had kept attention elsewhere long before the new regime was the one to threaten him. Now, though, he pulled himself up to his full height. He lifted his chin only the fraction it took to sneer down at his aunt the way his father had sneered down at everyone.

Kreacher saw and made the wise choice to leave. “It’ll give you peace of mind,” Kreacher explained before walking out.

Andromeda hadn’t stopped speaking, “- do you think you are?”

“I,” Draco said, “am a man you should be very thankful already survived the dragon pox. Like my mother survived, and Kreacher survived.”

“Why would I be thankful-”

“You should be thankful because you’re about to be very, very sick.” Draco answered, catching Andromeda off guard. “It’s true I don’t know what happened between you and the Black family, and at no point in my life do I intend to inquire on it, but I do know it happened before I was born twenty years ago. Which means you were already up in the north when the dragon pox last came and to you it’s just a story of something that happened to other people. Which is likely why you would say something so monumentally stupid as to accuse my mother of overreacting.”

Andromeda finally got to her feet, well versed in gathering the appearance of height and size even if she was nowhere near Draco’s height. She took on being formiddle with the same ease Draco took on being haughty. “Put thought into your words before you insult me again.”

The strain in staying still could be seen in every tense limb of Draco’s body. “I will give it as much thought as you bothered to when you told Kreacher he was overreacting to the disease that killed his wife.” Andromeda flinched back as if she’d been slapped. “Or as much as when you told my mother she could not recognize the disease that killed my cousin, Aunt Bellatrix’s daughter.” The surprise hit Andromeda harder this time. Likely, she didn’t know Bellatrix ever had a child. Few did. “Which is to say very little thought at all. With luck, this will be exceptionally short sighted of me when in the end you survive to show me your wrath. But in the meantime, I recommend you be useful. And thank god my mother’s here to care for you when you fall ill, because I won’t do it.”

Then Draco stormed from the room.

He marched through the house, banging up and down different flights of stairs without anywhere to go. He should take his own advice and be useful, only he wasn’t sure how to be useful. His mother was smart and efficient, and if he found her he could let her create a whole to-do list he could follow, pretending it would make a difference. And knowing his mother, it probably would be beneficial, only it wouldn’t guarantee anything and Teddy was sick and could die. Draco ran out of steam the fourth time he walked halfway up the third staircase. He dropped right there and sat down. He buried both hands in his hair and pulled hard enough it hurt.

Most people survived. It was better if you had someone to take care of you, to make sure you stayed hydrated and to help cool you if the fever spiked. However, many didn’t, and it was worse for the young and the old. Like for the cousin he never met, and for Teddy.

Draco wished he could sob like his mother sobbed, to let out all the feelings inside him then. He growled instead, jumping back to his feet and swinging around with all his force to slam his fist into the stairway wall.

“Holy fucking hell!” Draco shouted, because it hurt. His eyes did water then, from the pain. He pulled his hand back from broken wood and saw his fist was bleeding. “Fuck!” he yelled again. He held his fist to his chest as he stomped down the stairs, all the way to the kitchen.

Kreacher was back. He took one look at Draco and asked, “What did you do?”

Draco muttered, “Something stupid.”

“You always were a stupid boy,” Kreacher answered, but he got the medical kit and a small bag of ice. Draco sullenly let him wrap up his hand.

Draco was sent back upstairs with jugs of water and and a bowl of broth. He let himself into Teddy’s room, and almost spilled everything. Andromeda was there, sitting on the floor next to Teddy’s bed.

Her movements were slow when she turned to examine Draco. “You knew he was sick,” she said. Draco shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his hand aching as it held the tray, but he wasn’t sure if he should go in. Andromeda turned back to her grandson and brushed her hand through his sweaty hair. The boy didn’t wake, as he normally might have.

“Um,” Draco tried, “shouldn’t you, I don’t know, quarantine?” he asked.

Andromeda ignored the question. “He likes you,” she said instead, the tone of accusation softened because she was aware Teddy might hear her. “Can you stay and watch him awhile?”

“Pardon?” Draco asked, not sure he heard her.

Andromeda was already getting to her feet. “Narcissa is helping me gather some bedding. I’ve decided we’ll use Teddy’s rooms for the women and children who get sick. Narcissa tells me it is better if someone can be there to watch them.” She took a moment to stare at Draco, as if for the first time. “You’ll tend to them?” she asked.

Draco gulped, then nodded.

Andromeda nodded, too. “Very good,” she said, and then left to make herself useful.