A/N: *bursts through the wall like the Kool-Aid Guy*

"OH YEAH!"

*Does a happy dance and stick the chapter into your morning coffee cup*

*Waggles eyebrows*

*Dashes away, cackling*

xx-Kitten.

Tip of My Tongue

By Kittenshift17

Chapter 47

With nothing else to do at home that didn't involve sobbing and moping and missing her son with all of herself, Hermione conceded that the only sensible thing to do would be to go back to work. She couldn't stay home any longer. Not when it was so empty and the rooms were all so quiet. She'd grown so used to having Teddy and Scorpius there alongside Aurelian throughout the length of Ginny's illness and Astoria's recovery that the house seemed desolate and unwelcoming without the endless roaring and shouting of three happy little boys.

"Welcome back, Granger!" colleagues shouted to her as Hermione slunk through the office. She hadn't slept well last night and she was unaccustomed to the work-day hours after so long being unwell herself. Not to mention that mornings were hard.

"Thanks," she managed each time she passed their desks, noting with a little spiteful amusement that a few colleagues were obviously displeased by her return. In fact, a few of them looked downright dismayed at the very sight of her.

Hermione didn't blame them. More than one of her colleagues had felt the sting of her fury and the scald of her disappointment when she had been forced to work with them over the years. More often than not, she had found them wanting and let them know the extent of their failings by her standards. They weren't entirely wrong to be less than welcoming, and Hermione didn't blame those still sucking on sour grapes from their past altercations. In truth, she hadn't the energy to spare for caring one way or another about their opinions. She didn't have the energy to worry about those that muttered behind their hands and scowled in her direction, either. They'd obviously been reading the papers. They obviously thought her a home-wrecker and a harlot given Astoria's ordeal and slow recovery.

Those people were paid no more mind than the lumps of drywall separating the offices.

"Hermione, it's you!" Luna Lovegood stepped into her path, smiling warmly and encircling Hermione in a welcoming hug, thoroughly distracting her from the mutterers. Hermione blinked dumbly for a long moment at the feel of anyone's arms except Malfoy's encircling her for the first time in a long time. "I'm so glad to see you, my friend. Welcome back!"

Numbly, Hermione allowed the hug her friend offered, pleased at the welcome and comforted by the scent of cornflowers and candyfloss that always clung to the willowy blonde. After so long breathing in the horrible smells of disinfectant and bodily fluids at the hospital, and then the dustiness and muskiness of her home after being left unaired and closed up for such an extended time, the familiar and fresh scent that always clung to Luna was a welcome change.

"Hi Luna," Hermione managed softly, curling her arms around the other woman lightly and trembling with the need to cling to her and break down all over again. Merlin, she was tired of tearing up and feeling like she had no control over her emotions. She couldn't lose control again here in the office. Not if she was going to get back to the way things were supposed to be. She didn't want to be that colleague, sniffling in the breakroom and sobbing in the loos. That simply wouldn't do, no matter how heartsore she still happened to be.

"It's so good to see you, Hermione," Luna said quietly. "I had feared the fairies would claim you, but you have bested their sickness once again."

"If only it was as simple as brewing a potion to be rid of dragon pox, too," Hermione murmured into Luna's long, loose locks.

"A smudge-stick of Glittering Squoedum dung burned on a bed of witch-hazel and cherrywood would heal them," Luna prescribed airily.

Ordinarily, Hermione would've dismissed such a comment because there wasn't a bestiary in the world that featured a Glittering Squoedum and because Luna was notoriously obsessed with creatures of myth, legend, and her own crazy imaginings. But Hermione was a desperate mother who would do anything for her son, and so she couldn't hold her tongue.

"Do you know where to find one?" Hermione asked Luna seriously, pulling out of her embrace to hold her shoulders, squinting at her through stinging eyes from arms-length.

Luna blinked owlishly, looking for a moment like she wasn't sure of the question before she smiled again.

"Daddy always says the Glittering Squodems hide in the snowy parts of the world where humans rarely go. They can camouflage better in the snow and the ice, you know?"

"If you were planning to search for one with some haste, where would you look, Luna?" Hermione pressed the other woman, needing more than vague facts that might very well be nothing more than the ramblings of a wild imagination.

"The North pole would be a good place," Luna offered, frowning thoughtfully. "Though I'm sure Daddy said he saw one in the Isle of Skye, once. During the winter, of course. They hibernate during the summer or else the sun catches them and they glitter like disco balls and everyone would know where to find them and probably try to domesticate them."

"The Isle of Skye?" Hermione confirmed. "You're sure?"

"Mmmm," Luna hummed. "But it was several years ago when Daddy was there. They may be migratory."

"If I sent hunters looking for one?" Hermione pushed.

"There's no reason they shouldn't find something," Luna offered, smiling genteelly as though all was well and right in the world and Hermione had to remind herself that Luna was always one for looking on the bright side of things and finding the silver lining, even when to everyone else's eyes one did not exist.

"Thank you," Hermione said quietly, thinking she would go herself if she could, but knowing that as long as her precious boy was in the hospital, she could no more leave than she could keep from worrying. She squeezed Luna's shoulders gently to better convey her gratitude before stepping around her.

"You're very welcome, Hermione. Shall I send the best hunters to find one, then?" Luna asked as she turned to watch Hermione move down the hall.

"Send whoever we have available," Hermione nodded. "I'll speak with Malfoy."

Luna raised her eyebrows.

"You can't ask him to leave his sons for a hunt, Hermione," Luna council softly, following her down the hall in the direction of Hermione's lab.

Hermione supposed not.

"I don't think I'll need to ask him to leave them to go on the hunt, Luna," Hermione admitted quietly as she let herself into her lab and sighed at the stacks of paperwork that had gathered in her in-tray during her extended absence.

The one time she'd have hoped her colleagues could be slack on their paperwork…

"Hermione…" Luna sighed, pressing the door to the lab closed behind herself and leaning back against it with sympathy in her eyes and a pained expression on her face. "I don't pretend to know the kind of pain you're feeling with Aurelian in the hospital… but that goes double for Draco."

Hermione didn't bother questioning that Luna clearly wasn't surprised in the slightest that Draco was Aurelian's father or bother to ask if what the papers had been writing could be true. On more than one occasion during their friendship, Luna Lovegood had proved she was incredibly perceptive, and Aurelian's paternity had undoubtedly never been a secret to the intuitive blonde. Running her hands through her hair in frustration, Hermione eyed the other witch ruefully.

"Believe me, I'm well aware of his pain, Luna," Hermione reminded the woman quietly.

Luna nodded.

"You mean to tell him there might be a cure and you think he'll go hunting for it just the same?"

"He's a worried father fearing for the lives of his son," Hermione sighed, sinking into the chair behind her desk and staring over the top of it at her friend. "Of course, he'll go. He's been hunting for a while again, hasn't he? Since he got better?"

Luna nodded thoughtfully.

"I think it helps take his mind off things," Luna said.

"I think he thought we all would die and planned to follow us into the grave," Hermione contradicted bluntly. "But I had hoped that I had talked him out of it."

"Glittering Squodem's aren't dangerous, at least," Luna offered in return. "Just incredibly shy and very rare."

Hermione nodded in return.

"Do you have any literature on them, by any chance?" she asked seriously. "If we're sending a hunting team, I'll need to give them something more to go on than just a verbal description. Has anyone ever seen one, or captured a picture of one that I can show to the team?"

Luna nodded.

"I'll get my Bestiary," she offered.

"Thank you, Luna," Hermione smiled tiredly. "Really, thank you."

Luna only smiled kindly in return before letting herself out of the office and heading off down the hall to retrieve the tome, leaving Hermione to her own devices and the mountain of paperwork waiting to consume her.

~O~

"What's it supposed to do?" Malfoy asked when Hermione called him into her office later brief him on the situation and their newest target.

"According to Luna, if we burn their dung on a bed of witch-hazel and cherry-wood as a smudge-stick and have the boys inhale it and pass over the sores from the pox, it will heal them," Hermione repeated what Luna had told her.

"Do we trust that Lovegood's not just off her rocker?" he asked sceptically, though his eyes traced over the pictures in the Beastiary that Luna had provided, riddled though it was with notes and speculations about the creatures being migratory, shy, and hard to locate.

There was a time when such desecration of a book would've made Hermione's left eye twitch, but Luna's bestiary was hand-written, the photographs within it – even those of well-known and common creatures – she had taken herself. Hermione idly examined the pages, wondering just when it might be that this tome would be published by the brilliant and eccentric Lovegood girl. Hermione suspected that when the time came, the tome would be as well-touted and popular as Newt Scamander's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

"Do you really want to let the opportunity of finding a cure for the boys pass us by if there's even the slightest hint that it's more than Luna's wild imagination?" Hermione countered in return and Malfoy grunted a quiet defeat. "There are pictures, after all. They're dated. Probably taken by her father."

"He's even more cracked than she is," Malfoy muttered.

"Be that as it may, they're real pictures. You can't fake photographs like these in the magical world."

She pointed to the image on the pages of the massive, glittering. Hermione wondered in passing if this was the very creature that muggles had long declared the Abominable Snowman.

When she lifted her eyes back to look at Malfoy, she watched him run a hand through his hair, noting that he'd clearly been bitten by something on whatever of his most recent hunts he'd taken. The appendage was wrapped in a clean bandage. He looked tired too, the dark circles under his eyes a permanent fixture for as long as the boys continued to suffer. Hermione wished there was some way they could just be healed, and she hated how much hope was swelling within her that Luna might be right about the Glittering Squoedums. She couldn't take it if their precious sons had to remain in that wretched hospital for much longer.

"I'll go now," Malfoy said quietly as he straightened his once more, squaring his shoulders in preparation to venture into the wilds.

"They prefer to the cold places of the world. You'll have to dress warmly," Hermione told him. "And take back-up. You never know when the ice and the snow might shift and pitch you into a world of trouble. I can't explain to the boys that you're never coming back, Malfoy. I won't."

Malfoy's grey eyes were haunted when he lifted them to rest steadily on her stricken face. He searched her expression impassively for a moment before looking over his shoulder to the closed door of her lab. Hermione watched him warily when he aimed his wand at the door and the lock clicked closed.

"You won't have to, Granger," he promised quietly. "I promise."

Hermione whimpered when he closed the distance between the two of them, his hands lifting to cup her cheeks and guide her mouth to his. She melted into him, kissing him back desperately and hating herself for how badly she wanted him and how immediately she caved to the affection.

She wasn't supposed to want him like this. She wasn't supposed to be so dependent on him for…. Everything, these days. In the turbulent sea of her emotions and the chaos ruling her life, he'd become the one constant – a life raft amid the storm – and she hated that she'd let him worm his way under her skin as he had. She knew it was a bad idea. She knew nothing good could ever come of this. She knew that pining for him all through the night just because he'd elected to spend a single night away from her since her release from the hospital was cause for alarm.

And still, she kissed him like he was all she would ever need. Worse, she kissed him like she didn't think she could live without him.

When the rattle of spines smacking into protective glass made them both jump, they broke apart gasping.

"We can't," Hermione muttered against his lips as Malfoy walked her backward across the room until her back pressed up against the edge of her workbench.

"We can," he assured her, his hands finding her hips like he might boost her up onto the bench and have his way with her right then and there.

The Jabberwalkie in the tank behind him emitted a vicious, rattling hiss that distinctly suggested they not continue.

"We're at work," Hermione reminded Malfoy quietly. "And people are already gossiping about what you must do to me after hours in payback for what a hard-ass I am when we're on the clock."

"Let them gossip," Malfoy shrugged, stealing another dizzying kiss.

Hermione melted into him and emitted a soft moan when his hands slid to her arse before he lifted her up to perch on the edge of her workbench where he could slot himself between her legs. There was a part of her that hated both of them for the way her thighs parted around him welcomingly and locked behind him, only too willing to pull him in close.

More spines smacked into the protective glass and a wretched growl filled the room. Hermione wondered if the behaviour from the long-captive creature was natural inclination or learned behaviour after being cooped up inside that tank for so long while her lab had been empty except when someone had come in to feed the creatures she'd been studying while Hermione had been away.

"Nosy bugger," Draco accused the beast in the tank, glaring over his shoulder at the creature he'd brought her such a long time ago.

"Even the creatures disapprove of workplace nookie," Hermione pointed out, despite the hands she'd tangled in his blond hair.

"Let them disapprove," he shrugged. "I want you."

Hermione trembled at the firmly stated fact. How was she supposed to resist when he was so direct about what he wanted from her?

"We can't," Hermione shook her head. "Not at work. Not with everything else that's going on."

Neither of them mentioned the fact that Astoria was continuing to make a plodding but promising recovery or the fact that the wretched bitch had given a statement indicating Dolohov had kidnapped her on Lucius's orders when her affair had come to light. They didn't mention the fact that three nights ago, he'd fucked her in a blind fury after receiving a missive from his lawyers claiming that the signatures on his divorce papers were to be stricken from the record due to the duress Astoria claimed at the time of signing.

"You're really worried what any of those tossers think?" Malfoy challenged quietly, nodding toward the door to her office and curling his lip at the thought of their colleagues beyond it.

"We don't need to add fuel to the fire," she reminded him.

"I've been sleeping in your bed every night, Granger," he reminded her drolly.

"Yes, well, no one else knows that, though, do they?"

"They probably do," he shrugged. "So what?"

"So, you're still married, you may recall."

"And the clause in my marriage contract says I can shag the mother of my child. Which is you."

"And her."

"I'm not shagging her."

Hermione rolled her eyes, sighing heavily and letting her hands slide out of his hair to run down his neck and rest on his chest, pushing him back a little.

"I'm not shagging you in the office, Malfoy," she told him. "Not now, and not when your divorce is finalised."

"Why not?" he asked.

"I study my creatures here," she reminded him. "And it's creepy with them watching."

She eyed the Jabberwalkie over his shoulder where the nasty creature leered at her and flung more poisonous spines at the glass. Malfoy sighed, slouching a little and giving up on the idea of having her then and there.

"Fine," he grumbled, leaning into her neck for another long minute before slowly stepping back.

Hermione had to make a concentrated effort to unhook her legs from around him.

"Go and find me the creature that will save our son," she commanded of him softly when he stepped away and ran both hands over his face and through his hair, looking like the last thing he wanted to do was move away from her.

He sighed, nodding his head and squaring his shoulders once more.

"Fine," he repeated, heading for the door. He stopped when he reached it and looked over his shoulder at her with one hand on the doorknob. "But I'm going to fuck you when I get back, Granger. Know that."

Hermione bit her lip and looked him up and down, of more than half a mind to call him back and let him do so right then and there. He was out the door before she could respond, and for a long time afterward, she remained seated on her desk staring into space and thinking about all the wicked ways he'd already had her, and all the other ways she still wanted to have him.

~O~

"This is preposterous," Lucius Malfoy growled at his wife as he paced back and forth across the length of his study.

Narcissa watched him over the rim of her whisky glass without a word. The open letter summoning Lucius to the Ministry with all due haste for immediate questioning regarding the detainment of, and subsequent dealings with a known and hunted criminal seemed larger than any erumpent in the spacious room.

"I can hardly be punished for keeping a criminal locked up when they themselves would've locked him up," Lucius was arguing hotly.

Narcissa chose not to make mention of the fact that he was going to be accused of harboring a known fugitive, in addition to what amounted to little more than kidnapping and false imprisonment. She thought about pointing out that if he submitted to questioning, he would undoubtedly be given Veritaserum this time. He had scraped by during the last round of questioning surrounding Astoria's disappearance because it was only a suspicion that he might've been involved. With Astoria having come right out and accused him of having her kidnapped, the Aurors would not be so lenient this time.

"You should have killed him when you had the chance," she said evenly when Lucius huffed dramatically and looked at her in frustration, evidently annoyed with her silence. "You should have listened to Draco and left Astoria be. If we'd simply paid her to go away, none of this would have happened."

"Is now really an appropriate time for an 'I told you so', dearest?" Lucius hissed, his eyes flashing.

"I don't imagine I'll be given another chance to voice one when they give you Veritaserum and you confess to imprisoning Dolohov beneath the Manor, and to freeing him with orders to kidnap and murder our daughter in law."

"That wretched little harlot was cuckolding our son, I will remind you," he snarled.

"Yes, dear, but you've been caught," Narcissa hissed in return. "Because you didn't listen. You never listen. You didn't listen when I warned you that returning to the Dark Lord would see us all dead, and you didn't listen about letting Astoria go."

"You wanted her dead as much as I did!" he shouted furiously. "How dare you sit there and try to act like you didn't plot her doom in this very office along with me when you learned the paternity of her unborn child!"

Narcissa curled her lip in annoyance, recalling this uglier side of her husband that shirked responsibility the minute things started to go sour. Sometimes she wondered why she'd worked so hard to keep him out of Azkaban after the end of the war. They wouldn't be in this mess if not for his boneheaded ideas.

"If you answer that summons, we'll both be locked back in Azkaban, dear husband," she warned him dangerously.

"If I ignore it, they'll send the Aurors to escort me into custody," he reminded her.

Narcissa didn't doubt that they would, and she was rather beginning to think that it might be better for everyone involved if her ex-daughter-in-law was to be… persuaded… to recant her story, re-sign the divorce papers, and perhaps to have a sudden and tragic turn for the worse whilst on the road to her recovery. Rising to her feet, she straightened her skirt and finished off the rest of her drink.

"Go to our summer home in St. Petersburg," she commanded of her husband seriously, after running through the list of properties they possessed located in countries that had no extradition. "I'll handle it."

She was disgusted with him when he had the nerve to look like he was going to argue with her, before he sighed, his shoulders sagging in relief. Really, she'd be better off in the long run if she just let the dementors have him…. Shaking her head, Narcissa strode from the room with a plan formulating in the back of her mind.

Sometimes, if you wanted something done right, you simply had to do it yourself.