Before Minerva took the four to their new rooms, she called Madame Pomfrey in to give the boys a crash course on the care of infants. She doubted that either young man had spent much time with children at all, let alone ones as young as her colleagues currently were, so the lesson would be a good idea. Of course, not everything could be taught in such a short lesson, but at least Draco and Harry would know how to change a diaper after this, practicing on the magical dummy that the mediwitch had snapped up as neither of the sleeping babies needed changed at the moment.

“I’ll give you both a bag with supplies for now, but you’ll have to go to Hogsmede soon to buy more,” Madame Pomfrey said, beginning to fill two baby bags that Minerva had transfigured from sheets of paper. Draco, making a face of disgust at the red bags with gold lions cavorting on it, changed one of the bags to a proper Slytherin green with silver snakes slithering about. Harry rolled his eyes, but Madame Pomfrey didn’t acknowledge it. “I’m including a fair few baby books. They are a little young to understand the stories, but reading to them will help with their development. If you need to keep them entertained, even reading passages of your textbooks will work, provided that you are willing to make adjustments to how you read aloud.”

“Adjustments?” Harry asked, confused. Was something wrong with how he read now? Glancing over showed that Draco looked equally confused, which made Harry feel at least a little better. This might be entirely new to him, but at least Draco was just as lost and so the Slytherin wouldn’t be trying to show him up.

“Adjustments, yes,” Madame Pomfrey replied. “Try singing, or even just changing the pitch of your voice and accent while reading. They may be too young to understand the stories fully, but it will help them develop their language skills which will be necessary if we cannot find an antidote.” She didn’t want to dwell on that outcome, however, and so she continued briskly. “They will likely babble at you, and I encourage you to talk to them when they do. They’re far too young to talk yet, but this will help them to develop their conversation and social skills. Their memories develop rapidly as they grow, and speaking to them will help them store away important words, such as your names.”

Once she was finished, she handed both boys one of the baby bags, as well as cunning little slings that would keep the baby fully supported against their chests and leave their hands free. Good for when they were going to class, or otherwise just had their hands full. After that, they followed the headmistress down several floors until they reached their assigned rooms. “Everything you need should be accounted for, including your trunks,” Minerva said, before she turned to go. “Try to keep to your rooms until dinner, I will make an announcement then.”

“What about the classes?” Draco asked, curious. “You can probably get old Slughorn to come back to teach Potions again, but who’s going to cover for Lupin? It was hard enough finding a competent Defense teacher in the first place, the rest of them have been a joke.”

“So you’re admitting that Remus is a good teacher? He’ll be glad to hear that when he’s back to normal,” Harry said, smirking.

Draco’s reply made his smirk die away quickly. “If they get turned back, Potter. There’s an entire wing of St. Mungo’s that deals with potions-related accidents, and most of them are from experimental potions. Uncle Severus took me there when I was a kid, to show me why I shouldn’t fool around in his lab.” That had been a mistake he’d never made a second time, since he didn’t want to end up locked away in St. Mungo’s.

“If necessary I will teach a few classes myself until a suitable replacement is found, the other professors will as well,” Minerva replied. “But, it shouldn’t come to that. I suggest you go and explore your rooms while you have the chance, boys, as Severus and Remus won’t sleep forever.”

That was something that neither Harry or Draco had considered, so they said goodbye to the headmistress and headed into their new, hopefully temporary, rooms.

It wasn’t as bad as they considered. The common area was decorated neutrally, with light brown walls and a darker brown trim. The furniture was similarly neutral colors, in varying shades of brown, likely to keep from claims of favoritism of one House over the other. Two doors led off of the main room, aside from the one they had just entered through. Opening the first, Draco reported that it was a bathroom, done in shades of blue. Aside from the typical things one expected in a bathroom, Draco noticed a stand with two small towels, bottles of some sort, and two odd, plastic contraptions that he assumed were the baby baths that Pomfrey had mentioned earlier. She’d mentioned that, if the babies didn’t seem to like the baths, giving them a bath only a few times a week would be fine until they were old enough to start crawling.

Harry opened the other door once Draco returned, finding that it led to a small hallway with three more doors. The first one he opened clearly led to his bedroom, as it was done up like his room in Gryffindor tower, in shades of red and gold. The next one had two cots and was decorated in soothing yellow shades. Going by the cots as well as the variety of baby things, this was the babies’ room. The room on the opposite side was clearly Draco’s room, as it had been made to look like his room in the dungeons, with silver and green prevalent.

“Let’s lay these two down, and try to figure out some kind of schedule,” Harry suggested. It was easier said than done, since neither of them had much experience with babies and were wary of waking their de-aged professors up, but they managed and after a few minutes Severus was sleeping in the dark wood cot with green sheets, while Remus was in the second cot, with lighter colored wood and red sheets.

“Alright, unpack and meet in the main room?” Harry asked. “How will we hear them if they cry, though? The walls are pretty thick.”

“Monitoring spell,” Draco said, taking out his wand and showing Harry how to cast the spell. “My father showed me how, when Uncle Severus was recovering. He spent some time at our manor once he was out of St. Mungo’s, because he still needed monitoring.”

Harry filed that information away as something to ask about later, heading to his room while Draco went to the other one. As Minerva had promised, their trunks and other possessions were already waiting for them, including windows in both bedrooms with posts for their owls, if the birds wished to stay in the boys’ rooms instead of in the owlery.

It didn’t take long for Harry to unpack, and he settled in the common area to wait. He had only been sitting down for five minutes when the monitoring spell alerted him that the babies were awake and not very happy.

Draco was opening the door to the nursery when Harry arrived, and the two peered into the room together. Baby Remus was crying loudly, and Harry hurried over to see what was wrong with him. Baby Severus, Draco noted as he hurried to tend to his charge, was slightly quieter than Remus. As though he was afraid crying too loudly would be punished.

“Diapers,” both boys said in unison, grimacing. Neither of them relished the thought of changing a diaper, especially not since it was their professors who they were changing. Draco got out a changing pad and set it up on the floor along with a diaper, wipes, and the powder Pomfrey said would prevent a diaper rash, since there wasn’t room for both of them at the changing table.

Draco wasn’t quite quick enough when fastening the diaper, once he’d gotten rid of the dirty diaper and cleaned Severus up, the little boy decided to relieve himself, managing to hit dead center on Draco’s shirt. The blonde’s yell attracted Harry’s attention, and he couldn’t help but laugh when he saw the frustration on Draco’s face, and the innocence on his former professor’s.

Harry, meanwhile, learned why he shouldn’t take his eyes off the baby quickly. While he was watching Draco and laughing at his predicament, Remus rolled from his back to his stomach. If Harry hadn’t caught him quickly he would have rolled right off the changing table, which led the young Seeker to thank Quidditch for his quick reflexes.

Harry and Draco finally managed to get their miniature professors changed, and Harry volunteered to take both babies into the common area while Draco went to get cleaned up, an offer the Slytherin accepted gladly. Juggling two wriggly babies was more difficult than Harry expected, but he managed to get them into the common area without any further incidents. He laid them on their backs on the floor, smiling when they both wriggled and managed to flip over onto their stomachs after a few minutes. While the babies worked on that, Harry started reading over the schedule Madame Pomfrey gaved them.

“We have to feed them every three or four hours,” Harry said, looking up at Draco. Remus was babbling as he worked on holding his head up, while Severus seemed more interested in the texture of the carpet, repeatedly grasping it and patting at it while babbling his findings to his former colleague.  “And we have to make sure they nap twice a day for at least two hours, and the paper says they might nap in the evening too, but not as long.”

“Will they sleep at night if they’re doing all of their sleeping during the day?” Draco asked, moving to sit on the floor near the babies, keeping them between himself and Harry. He’d tidied up the nursery after changing his clothes, so he’d missed some of Harry’s earlier findings. “Still, letting them nap a lot is a good thing. They can sleep while we’re in class.”

“Apparently they’re old enough to sleep through the night,” Harry said, looking for that part of the schedule. “They might wake up if they need another bottle or changed, but apparently they’re past the waking up all the time part.” Harry couldn’t deny that he was pleased about that too. He didn’t really want to have to get up at night a lot and still have to go to class.

“Potter, if you ever hear me say that I want a kid someday, remind me of this,” Draco said, shaking his head. Their rivalry wasn’t as strong as it had been, the war had changed a lot. They weren’t friends, but they also weren’t enemies anymore. They were acquaintances, in Draco’s opinion, which would work well enough while they were taking care of their professors. “We need to talk about their names too.”

“What about their names?” Harry asked, confused. They knew both of the professor’s first names, so he didn’t see the problem. “McGonagall is going to tell the school about what happened at dinner, so it’s not like we have to keep it a secret.”

“But calling them ‘Severus’ and ‘Remus’ sounds odd, I never called him by his first name before,” Draco pointed out. His parents had raised him better than that, and so for adults he respected, he would use appropriate honorifics.

“Yeah, it makes me feel like Snape’s going to show up and take ten points from Gryffindor,” Harry admitted. “Well, what about a nickname? Babies have nicknames all the time, and it’ll be easier to keep the babies separate from the adults.”

“Father sometimes calls Uncle Severus ‘Sev’,” Draco suggested after a moment. “That could work.”

“Rem sounds weird though,” Harry said, grimacing. “Remy isn’t too bad though. Sevy and Remy?”

Draco snorted at that. “Potter, I’ll give you ten galleons if you call him ‘Sevy’ to his face once he’s an adult.” It would be a good enough nickname for the baby until then though. “At least none of the other potions were spilled, Pomfrey will need her Pepper-Up still and…”

“Malfoy?” Harry asked, watching at the Slytherin trailed off and turned paler than normal.

“Potter, what was Professor Snape brewing besides his experimental potion?” Draco asked, looking down at Remy.

“Pepper-Up, you already said that,” Harry said, confused. “Pepper-Up and…” he trailed off as well, focusing on the brown haired baby who had joined in Sevy’s game with the carpet. “Wolfsbane.”

“Babies can’t take the Wolfsbane Potion, Potter,” Draco added. “And the full moon is next week.”

“We need to talk to Madame Pomfrey, now,” Harry decided, scooping Remy up off of the floor.

“Way ahead of you, Potter,” Draco replied, picking up Sevy and heading to get the diaper bags, Harry right behind him.