Chapter the Seventh: In Which ‘Dracaena Draco,’ etc. Becomes a Household Word

Disclaimer: Not my wizards, not my elves, not my hair, not for profit.

Warning: I apologize if this one isn’t funny enough to warrant a warning.

It having been established that Wormy was, in fact, an accomplished hair stylist, life was poised to continue with a minimum of inconvenience.

Minimal if you disregarded the annoying detail that Draco rather demanded to know what it was all about.

“Why is this happening to me? Can’t you make a potion to stop it?” Draco whimpered as Wormy combed. His hair now trailed all the way from the kitchen to the library, where Severus had gone to look up hair tonics and related topics.

“Blame your ruddy father for this mess,” Severus grumbled. “He got it into his head that you need to be protected by an ‘impenetrable tower’ and that your hair has to be long enough to serve as ‘the sole means of ingress and egress.’” To his great relief, Severus discovered instructions for several useful hair care products in a reputable Potions journal, and immediately recognized that he possessed sufficient ingredients to produce them. Though he himself had never seen the need for such fripperies, he supposed they might be of some commercial value, come to think of it…

“What does that mean?” Draco interrupted his train of thought.

“I’m going to have to climb your hair on the way in and out of this bloody damned tower—incidentally, forget I said that when you write your mother next—and say some such rot as ‘Dracaena Draco, let down your hair’ each time.” As soon as the words left Severus’ mouth, he felt a sort of shiver of magic. He cursed under his breath as he scrabbled for a bit of parchment. It wouldn’t do to forget that carelessly uttered phrase and be stuck in the tower with the brat for all eternity (or trapped outside of it.)

“Will your hands be clean?” Draco asked, eyeing the appendages in question.

“Oh for—clean enough, you terror,” Severus said. He mulled the mechanics of this new situation and decided that he would be very much in violation of the contract if that twig of a boy broke his neck trying to support Severus’ weight, and that a stout hook in the window frame would be preferable to mixing charms with cursed hair.

“I want to go home,” Draco complained, for neither the first nor last time.

“Nothing would please me more. Once again, your father put paid to anything so easy. The only way out of here before you’re twenty one is if some prince or another rescues you.”

“When will that happen?” Draco asked eagerly. There was something odd about his keenness on the topic, though Severus couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I’m sure I have no idea.” Severus pushed his way past apprentice, elf, and hair and set to pottering about his storeroom, searching for a suitable hook. His efforts were suddenly hampered by a blond wave. “Good lord! Wormy, plait faster!”

Time passed. It became second nature for Severus to kick the coiled mass out of his way when walking about the tower, and he developed some rather impressive biceps. His disused front door became something of a repository for disused articles. He discovered (the hard way) that the curse somehow negated the flying spells that allowed brooms to work, effectively preventing anyone from flying in the tower window. And he grew more or less accustomed to Draco (and Draco’s hair) always being underfoot.

Had Draco’s mother not continued to spoil him by proxy and influence him through their correspondence, he might have shaped into a fairly solid citizen, insofar as was possible for a Malfoy (and a Malfoy with cursed hair, at that.) Being a Malfoy, the best he could do was to escape the gravitational pull of his congenital indolence and the aforementioned hair often enough to become competent.

Outside of the potions laboratory, Severus ignored Draco’s thousand-and-one pouts, sulks, fits, and gripes. Inside the lab…

“I hate smelly animal parts. Why can’t we make nice potions? I think Father would insist upon it. I quite like the Tincture of Chamomile compound you make for my hair. When will—”

Severus dropped his pestle into his mortar with a quelling CRACK. He pushed into his charge’s personal space and punctuated every angry, hissed word by jabbing the air with his beak of a nose.

“You will confine your speech within this laboratory to asking for essential clarification, informing me of hazards, or requesting to take your leave. Is. That. Understood?”

Severus had four score and nineteen problems, but intimidating an apprentice into obedience was not one.

So inside the lab, Draco confined his complaints to making faces and occasionally sniffling. Outside the lab, Severus learned to effectively tune out his thin whine. In this fashion, they lurched along for almost four more years more or less comfortably—even roomily, one might say, since Narcissa insisted that Draco was getting peaky and had a conservatory added to the tower (at Lucius’ expense. Severus determined to remain very much on Narcissa’s good side.)

Severus still looked forward to any rumors of a visiting heroic prince with a certain eagerness; but he gradually became resigned to coaching his protégé for a Master’s Exam and someday making arrangements to bequeath him the tower. It wasn’t an entirely odious thought. Draco was not a completely useless child, and might yet make a passable adult.

Severus had forgotten the small detail that between childhood and adulthood lies puberty.